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A pair of real estate firms started construction on a new industrial project in North Las Vegas — on a massive site that was blasted out of a mountain.

EBS Realty Partners announced last week that it broke ground on a two-building complex in Apex Industrial Park. It is partnering with Penwood Real Estate Investment Management on the project, which will span about 1.36 million square feet.

They are developing the 91-acre complex without any tenants lined up first. Located along Interstate 15, about 20 miles northeast of the Las Vegas Strip, the buildings are designed for such uses as manufacturing or distribution, according to a news release.

The roughly $175 million development, Apex Ridge Logistics Park, is slated to be completed in mid-2027, said EBS cofounder Quinn Johnson.

Last year, a representative for the developers told the North Las Vegas Planning Commission that the site “required significant blasting” to level the land and create a detention basin due to the mountainous terrain, meeting minutes show.

Johnson said in an interview that the project site is probably the most unique he’s ever had. He described it as a superpad built into the side of a mountain and noted it offers striking views of the Las Vegas Valley.

“It is quite the engineering marvel,” he said.

Heat up, then cool down

Overall, Southern Nevada’s warehouse market pumped the brakes over the past few years. More buildings sat empty, developers cut back on construction, and real estate pros said that landlords were offering months of free rent and other perks to land tenants.

Apex, which had a surge of big developments over the past several years, was saddled with a sky-high vacancy rate as tenants pulled back on leasing warehouse space in the Las Vegas area.

Southern Nevada’s overall industrial vacancy rate was 9.2 percent at the end of last year. Within that, the vacancy rate in Apex, 41 percent, was the highest among the region’s submarkets, brokerage firm Colliers International reported.

John Stater, Las Vegas research manager at Colliers, said the average size of a warehouse/distribution building in Apex is almost 800,000 square feet, compared to around 200,000 square feet in the valley overall.

When the pandemic sparked an accelerated shift to online shopping, this fueled demand for distribution space, and Southern Nevada’s warehouse market heated up. Developers launched waves of new projects, often without tenants lined up first, and quickly filled their buildings.

But demand for space eventually cooled off, leaving Apex with a high vacancy rate, Stater said.

‘Land of the giants’

Johnson, of EBS, also said that Apex’s vacancy rate soared amid the slowdown because the projects there are especially big.

“It’s the land of the giants,” he said.

But, he added, there has been increased activity lately in Southern Nevada, including in Apex.

DHL, for instance, has leased two buildings in Apex, giving the package-delivery giant around 1.2 million square feet combined, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in January.

Germany-based DHL, which was slated to operate the buildings as a contract logistics provider for a client, rented empty buildings that were constructed in 2023 and 2024, records show.

Moreover, two data-center operators bought big tracts of land in Apex over the last several months, amid an all-but insatiable appetite for digital storage space.

Switch purchased roughly 176 acres in the remote industrial park for $85.5 million in December, and Novva Data Centers acquired nearly 205 acres in Apex for almost $181 million last summer.

Blasted with dynamite

EBS’ site was previously penciled for a different sort of project.

In 2021, beverage-can maker Ball Corp. purchased the property for about $28.3 million, records show. The company had unveiled plans to build a $290 million plant, saying the facility would supply aluminum containers to beverage-industry customers.

However, Ball never built the project, saying in 2023 that it “permanently discontinued plans” for the North Las Vegas facility.

In 2024, it sold the Apex site to EBS and Penwood for $31 million.

Weston Adams, president of Western States Contracting, had sold the property to Ball, records show.

He confirmed this week that he built the project site as part of the contract with Ball, saying his team moved about 2 million cubic yards of dirt to form the pad, and that the plot is roughly 125 feet above ground.

As he described it, work crews drilled the mountain, blasted it with dynamite, and deployed equipment normally used in large mining operations to move the dirt and balance the site.

It took about 14 months, and cost $22 million, to build the pad, Adams explained.

He also said the view from up there is unmatched.

“You can see the entire valley,” he said.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.