Crocs-owned footwear brand opening distribution center in North Las Vegas
A footwear brand owned by Crocs Inc. is set to ship shoes around the country from North Las Vegas, starting next year.
Hey Dude, acquired last year by the popular clogs maker for $2.5 billion, is scheduled to open a distribution facility at Apex Industrial Park in the fourth quarter of 2023, said Rob Tecco, vice president of North American distribution and logistics at Crocs Inc.
It will occupy around 730,000 square foot of a newly built warehouse and, according to Tecco, service wholesale buyers across the U.S.
On Wednesday, officials with Crocs, project developer NorthPoint Development and the city of North Las Vegas gathered at the site to hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for Hey Dude’s facility. Site work is already underway.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development approved more than $8.6 million in tax breaks for the project in June.
The facility marks another sign of life at a remote industrial park that plodded along for years with little development.
Apex, off Interstate 15 at U.S. Highway 93, has been around for decades and offers thousands of acres for potential projects.
For a long time, construction activity was scarce amid a dearth of infrastructure.
But utility service has been expanding to Apex, and investors have been buying land and pushing ahead with construction plans in the industrial park some 20 miles northeast of the Strip.
NorthPoint broke ground on its two-building industrial complex, North Vegas Logistics Center, this summer. The project is expected to span more than 2 million square feet and sit on almost 130 acres.
It is slated to cost more than $220 million, not including tenant improvements, said Geoff Griffin, west region partner at Kansas City, Missouri-based NorthPoint.
Griffin said the Las Vegas Motor Speedway area, a popular spot for warehouse development in recent years, is “essentially built out,” and he described Apex as “the next frontier.”
“Finally after 30-plus years, there’s hard infrastructure here. … That’s what gets shovels in the ground and buildings being built,” said Colliers International broker Dan Doherty, whose team is tasked with finding users for NorthPoint’s project.
Beyond construction, the bigger milestone is when tenants are announced for speculative projects, he said.
“If you came back here 12 months from now, I think it’s going to be a night and day picture of what’s out here,” Doherty said.
Momentum was picking up in Apex before NorthPoint broke ground.
French energy giant Air Liquide held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in May for a $250 million liquid hydrogen plant at Apex, and Reno developer Dermody Properties broke ground late last year on a 664,300-square-foot distribution facility nearby.
Aluminum beverage can maker Ball Corp. also unveiled plans last year to build a plant at Apex; developer VanTrust Real Estate bought roughly 350 acres last year with plans for a 4.5 million-square-foot industrial park; and grocery chain Smith’s purchased nearly 100 acres last year.
Those sites are all near each other at Apex’s southern edge, and the surge of activity follows the launch of a water-pipeline project designed to serve that area of the park.
When city officials announced the 12-mile surface pipeline’s groundbreaking ceremony in 2018, a news release highlighted the need for basic utilities, saying: “Decades-old problem solved: Water coming to North Las Vegas’ Apex Industrial Park.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.