0920_September Comstock's Magazine September 2020 | Page 68

McClellan Park SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION WELCOME We began redeveloping McClellan Air Force Base into McClellan Park in 1999, prior to the base’s official decommissioning in 2001. Our team knew it would be an enormous undertaking with unknown potential challenges. There were 3,000 acres of land, 7 miles of rail and 8 million square feet of existing structures that required renovation and reuse. There was the responsibility of safely transposing a prominent business campus — one of the largest in the state — onto a Superfund site (a contaminated site to be cleaned up for return to productive use). This was the ultimate real estate development challenge, reinvigorating a site that at its peak employed 25,000 people and contributed $1.5 billion annually to the regional economy, but at closure employed only a few thousand. Through a public-private partnership with the County of Sacramento, the Air Force, and other local and federal organizations, we swiftly and successfully navigated those hurdles. Employment never dropped below the level it was when we began redeveloping the site, and today McClellan is a major county employment center. We redeveloped 8 million square feet of leasable space across the 3,000-acre park and turned it into one of the nation’s largest master planned business parks. Our efforts resulted in receiving the Environmental Protection Agency’s inaugural National Federal Facility Excellence in Site Reuse award for the legacy McClellan Park has both safeguarded and propelled forward. We always knew the site’s potential due to its historic significance to the region. The importance of McClellan Park to the community and the greater Sacramento region has continued to grow. We are fortunate for the contribution McClellan Park has made to the local economy and how it represents an opportunity for so many businesses to expand, while staying local to Sacramento and attracting new businesses to the region. Today, McClellan Park encompasses 9 million square feet of building space and boasts a 90 percent occupancy rate. Our campus is home to 250 commercial tenants who contribute more than 20,000 jobs to the Sacramento region. The amenities have grown to include a commercial hotel and several restaurants, along with 150 residences for the community and onsite employees. We began a new chapter for the project with our first new speculative development completed and fully leased in 2020. We expect to deliver up to 300,000 square feet of new distribution warehouse space in 2021, and we have county entitlements to build another 4 million square feet this decade. McClellan Park’s Sacramento Mc- Clellan Airport remains an instrumental resource to the public and government agencies, made even more crucial after its privatization in 2017. Sacramento McClellan Airport, the largest privately owned public-use airport in the nation, is one of the largest aviation firefighting bases in the state and is home to the US Coast Guard long range search and rescue operations. We are so proud of our team and its tireless work to continue to grow the McClellan Park campus and make it a place of endless opportunity for its tenants, Sacramento County and the region. We have accomplished so much in the last two decades but, really, we’re just getting started. Sincerely, McClellan Park Larry Kelley President Frank Myers Executive Vice President Chief Operating Officer 68 comstocksmag.com | September 2020