New logistics site opens in Baltimore; PepsiCo announced as tenant

A new logistics center has opened in Baltimore, representing the latest industrial development and increasing warehouse and distribution space in the area.

City Logistics, a 33-acre development offering over 300,000 square feet of space, is in southwest Baltimore on land previously occupied by Seton Keough High School, which closed in 2017. The development will seek to reactivate a key industrial site along Interstate 95 and provide job opportunities for workers in the Baltimore area.

The Maryland Department of Commerce said the food and beverage servicer PepsiCo is the first tenant of the newly opened logistics campus, occupying 112 thousand square foot space in one of the two buildings at the site designed to provide warehouse and distribution space.

The second building offers over 187 thousand square feet of space. No tenants have been announced, but there is significant interest given the site’s location next to I-95, said Katie Nolan Bryden, senior vice president for MRP Industrial, the site’s developer,

The logistics campus also is within an enterprise zone, a designation that offers income and real property tax credits to businesses for job creation and investment.

According to City Logistics, the new campus potentially could lead to over 400 jobs, with a focus on skilled trades, labor, transportation and service providers. The site also seeks to place an emphasis on local and regional subcontractors and vendors.

Nolan Bryden said the logistics campus allows for the redevelopment of the land while also providing access to job opportunities that do not require a college education. It was important for MRP Industrial to have the support of residents from the surrounding neighborhoods, and the company focused on a public partnership to gain public support for the project, Nolan Bryden said.

A report from commercial real estate company CBRE found that the Baltimore industrial market outperformed most projections in 2022; experts are cautiously optimistic regarding the state of commercial real estate in 2023. Vacancy increased in Q1 2023, but the market reported 550,000 square feet of occupancy gain during the same quarter.

CBRE said it also expects the global expansion of e-commerce activity to drive an increase in the demand for logistics space in coming years.

Nolan Bryden said that while it is challenging to find suitable development sites in Baltimore, logistics projects have the twin advantage of aiding community redevelopment while creating jobs in the logistics field.