Hines and an Ares fund are starting a four building, 809,141 square foot speculative project—built before any tenant has signed—of the Triangle's newest, highest spec warehouse and light manufacturing space in Durham, one of the larger recent Class A deliveries next to the park,…
The developer team behind a new 809,141-square-foot campus in Durham is reading the Triangle's industrial squeeze as a reason to build, not slow down. Foundry Commercial, on behalf of Hines and an Ares Real Estate fund, broke ground this week on Parkside Commerce Center, a four-building speculative Class-A industrial project on Silicon Drive, directly adjacent to Research Triangle Park. Phase I is scheduled to deliver in the fourth quarter of 2027, with a second phase to follow.
The project is positioned by the developer team as one of the premier new industrial developments in the Raleigh-Durham market this cycle, and the supply picture is the whole reason the partners are putting it up. "RTP-area Class-A industrial vacancy remains near historic lows," said Jeff Stephens, a Foundry partner overseeing the project, in the announcement of the start of construction.
The framing matters. Speculative industrial means the buildings go up before any tenant has signed, a calculated bet by the owners that demand will materialize at the rents they need to make the project work. In a submarket the developer team describes as supply-constrained, the calculus is straightforward. More than 800,000 square feet of new product arriving in two phases, with no anchor tenant announced, is the institutional version of a supply response: a wager that the squeeze the developer team is leaning on will hold, and that rents will support the construction math by the time the second phase delivers.
Phase I covers 521,548 square feet across two rear-load buildings at 4340 and 4360 Silicon Drive, both with 36-foot clear heights and 63 trailer stalls. 4360 Silicon Drive totals 237,824 square feet; 4340 Silicon Drive totals 283,724 square feet. Phase II, which the developer team has confirmed is part of the project but has not yet detailed publicly, is expected to follow Phase I.
The site sits in a corridor the project team is positioning for advanced-manufacturing, biomanufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and e-commerce users, the same mix that has absorbed the Triangle's recent Class-A deliveries. Silicon Drive runs along the southern edge of Research Triangle Park, with immediate access to Interstates 40 and 540, North Carolina Highway 147, and the I-85 corridor that links Durham to Raleigh and the broader Southeast logistics network. No anchor tenant has been announced for any of the four buildings.
What the project will actually test is whether the Triangle's industrial market can clear nearly a million square feet of new product by late 2027 without breaking the rent growth the developer team is counting on. The next reading on RDU industrial vacancy from the major brokerage research teams, due in the coming weeks, will set the baseline for that test, before any of the new square footage at Parkside hits the market.