Jan. 14—It wasn't novel enough that three separate companies were bidding last fall to lease a single distribution center that had only just finished construction along Interstate 5 at Highway 99. The bigger surprise came the morning after a winner was declared.

Second-place finisher Sunrise Brands, a Vernon-based clothing company, called up one of the project's developers to place dibs on the partnership's next speculative building, even though it was almost a quarter smaller at 446,000 square feet. Until construction finishes, Sunrise agreed to rent a slightly larger space nearby.

"We said 'OK, you're first place on this one,'" said Tom Simmons, vice president at Majestic Realty, a large City of Industry-based commercial developer that is on its fifth joint venture, nearing 3 million square feet of shared development, in six years of involvement with the Tejon Ranch Commerce Center. He called the second, pre-lease deal almost unheard of.

Business is suddenly jumping at TRCC after years of being largely overlooked in a most conspicuous location. A variety of recent transactions has accelerated development — and boosted revenue — at one of Kern's most prominent publicly traded companies.

TRCC has logged seven major deals totaling almost 1.3 million square feet in building leases and, separately, more than 150 acres in sales, all in the past year and a half.

This pace of dealmaking, previously unseen at TRCC, has made industrial development a leading revenue generator at Tejon Ranch Co., the Lebec-based agribusiness and diversified real estate developer that owns California's largest contiguous piece of private property.

In its most recent earnings report, from the third quarter of last year, the company said its 2.3 million-square-foot industrial portfolio was 100 percent leased, compared with 89 percent for its retail inventory a quarter the size.

The two segments together made up two-thirds of Tejon Ranch's third-quarter revenue. The company attributed the category's standout performance that reporting period mainly to its $22 million sale in July of 58 acres to an unnamed buyer for construction of a 725,000-square-foot distribution center expected to open next year.

At the center of TRCC's success is its location close enough to Southern California ports and a reasonable drive to the state's population centers, with a ready workforce a short commute away.

Its leading competition outside the county is the Inland Empire, whose sprawling distribution industry has all but maxed out on space, workforce and affordability. As retailers bulk up on domestic warehousing capacity, partly in response to logistics bottlenecks during the pandemic, Kern presents an attractive alternative.

First entitled in about 2000, TRCC is planned to have a little less than 20 million square feet of commercial space, about a third of which has been developed, with about 2.5 million square feet under development.

Maps provided by the company show most of the center's undeveloped, available acreage — up to 445 acres with room for six warehouses of different sizes — lies on the site's southeastern portion.

Whether the center's industrial property is built to suit individual tenants or developed on a "spec" basis — or sold to another developer weighing the same choices — is decided on a case-by-case basis as part of a "diversified strategy" reflecting market conditions, said Derek C. Abbott, Tejon Ranch's executive vice president of real estate.

"The goal is to move development forward at the site as quickly as we can," he said, adding that recent spec projects, in particular, have allowed the company to quicken development.

Barry Zoeller, senior vice president of corporate communications and investor relations, said the company's choices among development options also reflect customer preferences.

Tejon Ranch's other development projects are moving along more slowly. Three master-planned residential communities, including a large, 12,000-home development proposed next to TRCC, continue to move along, Zoeller said.

Simmons at Majestic said a big asset at TRCC is its list of prize tenants, including Fortune 500 companies like Caterpillar and Ikea. They come, he said, because they're looking for the best options for moving high-value inventory fast.

There wasn't much at the center when Majestic first partnered with Tejon Ranch there in 2016, he recalled. But it's turned out to be a good investment.

"It's become a very clear business plan," Simmons said. "This is very much the next logistics location for Southern California users."

(Editor's note: This story has been corrected to state how many square feet has leased has been leased at TRCC in the last year 18 months.)