Crown West Realty LLC executive Dean Stuart says the Spokane Business & Industrial Park’s current 98 percent occupancy rate is the highest he’s seen in his 17-year tenure with the company.

SBIP, located at 3808 N. Sullivan, has a total of 5 million square feet of leasable space in 50 buildings on a total of 615 acres of land. The park currently has 125 tenants, Stuart says. 

Stuart says prior peak occupancy at the business park during his tenure approached 96 percent in 2004 and 2005. When the recession hit, the occupancy rate fell to between 80 percent and 85 percent, he says.

Though none of the tenants at the business park are involved in the storage, processing, or growing of marijuana, Stuart says the legalized marijuana industry has put pressure on inventory here and across the state.

“There’s tremendous demand for space to grow and process marijuana. Though we elected to stay out of it (the marijuana industry) for several reasons, the fact is, that industry ate up industrial inventory, pushing rents up,” he says.

“We’ve benefitted from that increased market value as has every landlord across the state,” asserts Stuart, adding that Crown West deliberated about whether to accept tenants involved in the marijuana industry.

“Banks won’t work with you because federally, it’s against the law, so now you’re dealing exclusively with cash, and now you’re looking at risk and safety issues,” Stuart says.

“Then we weighed whether or not we’d run the risk of philosophical opposition from our existing tenants. The smell, the odor, on down the line. There were just too many variables that we looked at and realized we couldn’t control,” he says.

Crown West’s Spokane Valley-based corporate office has 25 employees, with 10 of them responsible for duties that include accounting, human resources, and information technology. Remaining employees consist of property managers and sales representatives as well as maintenance and administrative workers.

Stuart recently was named as vice president and general manager of Crown West, replacing Rob Gragg, who retired at the beginning of May after more than 20 years as vice president.

Stuart has been with Crown West since 2000, and now as vice president and general manager, is responsible for overseeing the leasing of Crown West’s portfolio of more than six million square feet of industrial properties. Stuart says he also will continue in his duties as marketing director, managing the design, development, and implementation of marketing activities. He had been serving in that position since starting at Crown West.

At the same time Stuart took over as vice president and general manager, Oliver Lawrence was promoted to asset and development manager here for the company’s Pacific Northwest division. He’s responsible for construction and capital project management for Crown West’s portfolio of real estate and water systems, Stuart says.

Lawrence oversees new development, renovation, remodeling, infrastructure, and tenant-improvement projects. Other responsibilities include property management functions and tenant relations for almost 7 million square feet of industrial, commercial, and office properties, Stuart says.

Also, Stuart says Chase Breckner was promoted to leasing manager for the business and industrial park here and for new business development in the region.

SBIP is bordered by Sullivan Road to the west, Trent Avenue to the north, Flora Road to the east, and Marietta and Euclid avenues to the south.

Spokane-based companies Spokane Industries Inc., Hydrafab Northwest Inc., and Inland Empire Distribution Systems, Inc. are among the major tenants at the industrial park.

Inland Empire Distribution Systems, which is a third-party logistics provider, occupies the largest amount of square feet at the industrial park at roughly 350,000, Stuart says.

Stuart says Crown West is financially strong, but company officials are being conservative with regard to continued growth and acquisitions.

“The park is built out, and overall market vacancy is low,” Stuart says. “It’s very tight right now, and construction costs are high.”

In addition to operating the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, the company manages a series of discretionary investment funds totaling more than $200 million in equity, and owns and manages land development investments totaling 8 million square feet of office, industrial, and mixed-use properties across the U.S., Stuart says.

Crown West’s inventory includes commercial and residential holdings in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, and North Carolina, Stuart says.

Recently, Stuart says, Crown West has been selling hundreds of residential lots to developers in the Phoenix, Tucson, and Reno markets.

“When the economy took a downturn during the Great Recession, and housing starts fell off a cliff, we purchased several thousand lots and are now in the process of selling back to developers. The residential opportunity is gone now, and we want to dispose of them,” he says.

Also, in the last three years, Stuart says Crown West has expanded its holdings by purchasing dryland and irrigated farms in Washington state.

“As a hedge against inflation, we purchased a 5,200-acre farm outside Burbank, (Wash.), and at the end of last year purchased another 2,000 acres of land adjacent to that 5,200 acres,” Stuart says.

At least for now, Stuart says Crown West doesn’t have plans to acquire more farmland.

“Water rights are a tremendous asset, and people are always going to need to eat. This is land that is sellable or leasable in the future,” he says.