Duke Realty just renewed Ferrara Candy’s 1.1M SF bulk warehouse lease at the Grand Lakes II project in Grand Prairie, Duke Texas Regional SVP Jeff Thornton revealed at Bisnow’s fourth annual DFW Industrial Real Estate Summit Tuesday morning.

Jeff says the candy company first signed on at Grand Lakes II six years ago, but given the spec inventory in the market, Ferrara recently spent time shopping around for new space (there are five 1M SF spec spaces available). “We were competing to keep our own tenant. Ultimately, we were able to meet their long-term need and keep this valuable tenant in our portfolio,” he says. To sweeten the deal, Duke added HVAC to another 356k SF of the warehouse, Jeff says. Duke’s Randy Wood repped the landlord, and CBRE’s Matt Mulvihill and Nathan Lawrence repped the tenant.

Jeff says the DFW industrial market absorbed about 17M SF in both 2012 and 2013 and absorbed almost that much in 2014. So, despite 25M SF of spec space coming to market, he thinks the market is pretty healthy as developers hesitated during the initial phase of the economic recovery before starting to build. There are few infill sites around the DFW International Airport with land becoming scarce in that area. The tightening in this submarket is evidenced by Duke Realty’s 60% pre-lease of its 270k SF Point West VIII spec industrial project that just delivered in February. He’s also seeing up to 30% rent growth in well-located and functional industrial projects, which is certainly above the historic norm in Dallas. Pictured is Grand Lakes II.

March Madness has hit Jeff’s house big-time with Jeff and his 8-year-old twins (Kate and Charlie) each making their own bracket. Despite Kate's bracket being busted in the first round, Jeff was proud to report that she's now leading her brother by five games and good ole dad by seven. All three have Kentucky going all the way, Jeff tells us.