IRG acquires former Naval facility in Pocatello

Industrial Realty Group (IRG), one of the country’s largest owners of commercial and industrial properties, announced on June 21 that it acquired a 150-acre industrial park at the north end of Pocatello. The property is currently branded as the Gate West Industrial Center and encompasses most of the grounds of the former WWII-vintage Naval Ordinance Plant (NOP).

The site includes 23 buildings with 1.4 million square feet of warehouse, industrial and office space. Current tenants including Eaton Metal Products, Frazier Industrial Co., Mountainland Contractors Supply, SME Steel Corp., Western Industrial Motor & Machine and Virginia Transformer Corporation.

“When we visited the property, we knew it would be a great investment,” said Stuart Lichter, president of IRG, in a statement. “The site has an incredible history, but we truly believe the best is yet to come.”

IRG intends to invest in the aging facility by completing deferred maintenance plus improving the exterior landscaping, painting and other roadway improvements. IRG is also considering offering new retail opportunities on site. These efforts will likely attract a mix of tenants, including industrial distribution, manufacturing, office and retail tenants.

Don Zebe, Jared Zebe and Mike Zebe of Colliers have already begun marketing the site, which has been rebranded as the Titan Center. “The project is very attractive to tenants looking in the southeast Idaho market,” said Don Zebe, the agent for the property. “We’ve responded to multiple interested tenants who are considering leasing existing space or potential build to suit options on the 150-acre property. We anticipate this high demand will continue.”

“The city is excited to welcome Industrial Realty Group to Idaho,” said Mayor Brian Blad of Pocatello in statement. “This shift, at such an important campus in our community, will result in an expanded tax base and significant job creation as more companies choose to move to the great city of Pocatello.”

The Titan Center offers rail access as well as easy access to the Yellowstone Avenue interchange on I-86. Some of the facilities on the site include high-capacity cranes, high ceiling clearances and rail tracks leading into buildings — the legacy of the property’s heavy-manufacturing capabilities for creating heavy artillery.

The NOP was built during WWII, on unincorporated county land three miles north of Pocatello city limits. Pocatello annexed the land during the consolidation with the unincorporated village of Alameda in 1962, which made Pocatello the largest city in Idaho for a short time.

The NOP manufactured shipboard artillery in six-inch to 16-inch sizes. It also performed maintenance and re-rifling of large artillery gun barrels, which lose their rifling after repeated use. New and refurbished artillery were then shipped to the Naval Proving Grounds centered on the former town of Scoville in the Arco Desert for proving. The proving grounds became the National Reactor Testing Station after the war, which was the predecessor of the Idaho National Laboratory site.

The Navy mothballed the NOP after the Korean war in 1953. Most of the NOP’s 211 acres were sold in 1956, excluding a corner of the property at the southeast corner of Poleline Road and Yellowstone Avenue, which became the home of the Pocatello office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

IRG was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in Los Angeles. The firm has a portfolio containing over 150 properties in 28 states with over 100 million square feet of rentable industrial and commercial space.