Industrial Park Assoc. Breaks Ground in Oxnard

For a company that has developed more than 1.5 million square feet of industrial space in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley, breaking ground on an additional 34,000 square feet might not be considered monumental.

But for Ventura-based Industrial Park Associates, a project on 1.88 acres of land in Oxnard’s Maulhardt Industrial Center is cause for celebration.

“We haven’t built a building since 1991,” said Douglas Wax, president of the 21-year-old real estate brokerage and development firm.

“That year we built two, one in Camarillo and a building at the corner of Camino del Sol and Graves Avenue [in Oxnard]. There just hasn’t been the numbers in the market to make sense since then.”

Wax’s latest project, on North Graves Avenue, will be occupied by KR Tools, which for the past 5 1/2 years has been housed in another of the developer’s buildings in Camarillo. Weather permitting, Wax said, the project could be completed within five months.

At the same time, Industrial Park Associates is looking for a business interested in another 2.28-acre parcel adjacent to the KR Tools site. Industrial Park Associates is in the design stage of a 40,000- to 42,000-square-foot development, and Wax is optimistic about the prospects.

“We are in a very dynamic industrial real estate economy right now, which is motivating a lot of speculative [development],” Wax said. “The Oxnard area seems to be particularly attractive to users, and with a company like Haas Automation moving here, they are kind of like a magnet.”

Wax saw the tide turning last spring.

“I looked at what people were offering land for and it was less than half of what we purchased land for in 1990,” he said. “It’s a developer’s dream.”