Fontana’s speedway sold for $559m to Ross Perot Jr. , set to be logistics hub
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Fontana's nearly 30-year-old Auto Club Speedway will be replaced by a multi-million dollar logistics hub after Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development bought the property.
At 6.6 million square feet, the logistics facility will be called the Speedway Commerce Center, according to CBRE, which brokered the purchase.
The Dallas-based Hillwood Development Co. and CBRE Investment Management purchased 433 acres of the speedway property for an estimated $559 million, according to Corion Properties.
Auto Club Speedway received entitlements from San Bernardino County in 2021 to reduce the size of the existing two-mile track to develop a smaller half-mile “Next Gen” short track, and to make room for the logistics center.
Auto Club Speedway will retain ownership of 90 acres for the short track and parking lot rights for 106 acres around the track.
NASCAR shut down the track built by Roger Penske with plans to create a new track in its place, the Associated Press reported.
Auto Club Speedway President Lane Allen said the new track will not be ready for races until 2024, according to NASCAR.
Development of the Fontana track started in 1995 at the former Kaiser Steel Mill site. The track was completed a year later. NASCAR began racing there in 1997.
The Auto Club Speedway hosted its last race on Feb. 26, the sold-out Pala 400 NASCAR CUP Series race.
Located near the juncture of Interstates 15 and 10, the property is situated at the heart of the Inland Empire industrial market, which includes 632 million square feet of total inventory in the IE West, Corion officials said.
The property and the San Bernardino BNSF rail yard are aimed at “Fortune 100-caliber” firms and e-commerce tenants.
The IE area is one of the strongest logistics markets in the nation for investors, with a vacancy rate of 1.2% and rent growth of 35.4% in 2022, according to CBRE Investment Management, which added that the Fontana submarket had a vacancy rate of 0.3% and rent growth of 36.9% last year.
“Speedway Commerce Center offers a scarce opportunity for us to invest in what we believe is irreplaceable real estate of scale in one of the top distribution markets in the world,” Mary Lang, portfolio manager of CBRE Investment Management, said in a statement. “We will be able to provide brand new product in the most undersupplied size segment within this high-growth infill market.”
Forbes on Ross Perot Jr.
Ross Perot Jr. founded real estate development company Hillwood, whose diversified portfolio is estimated to exceed 70 million square feet, according to Forbes.
His father, late billionaire presidential candidate Ross Perot Sr., let his son borrow against his fortune to start his real estate empire.
Perot Jr.'s Hillwood has developed and acquired nearly 250 million square feet of industrial space and 90 residential communities.
Hillwood also built AllianceTexas, an inland port on 27,000 acres of pasture outside Fort Worth, home to 61,000 employees and 525 companies.
Hillwood developed Frisco Station, a $1.8 billion, 242-acre mixed-use development in Frisco, Texas, which opened in 2021.
Daily Press reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227 or RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Fontana’s speedway sold for $559m to Ross Perot Jr. , set to be logistics hub
