Developer holds groundbreaking for Commerce Center 2

Attendees listen to a presentation at the site of the second phase of Commerce Center in Menifee. (Staff photo)

By Doug Spoon, Editor

Developers of the second phase of Commerce Center – formerly known as Commerce Pointe – held groundbreaking on Wednesday to discuss details of an addition to the City of Menifee’s southern gateway that is expected to bring numerous jobs to the area.

The second building will include 84,000 square feet of office and light industrial space for companies and will be built between the current phase 1 building and the 215 Freeway. It is designed to accommodate smaller unit sizes of 14,000 square feet each and is projected to be a boost to the area’s economy and job market.

“The winning look of the first building … we’re going to replicate it with the second building,” said Bryan Bentrott of Summit Development Corporation. “In a perfect world, if what happened in the first building happened here, that would be great. But we’re flexible. The units are set up perfectly to go to individual tenants or a single tenant, although we don’t think that’s likely.”

Building 1, which stands facing Zeiders Road at Ciccotti Street, is occupied by two tenants -- Chutes Systems, which manufactures linen and trash chutes; and Channell Commercial Corporation, which manufactures plastic and metal enclosures for utility lines and fiber-optic systems. Both have been very successful at the location and provide jobs for a number of employees.

Bentrott believes the same will be true for Building 2, which would relieve concerns of residents about heavy industrial use and few jobs because of automation. Building 2’s job total will depend on the type of business, but it is expected that multiple small local businesses will lease spaces and provide local jobs.

“It depends on the user,” said Menifee City Council member Matt Liesemeyer, who owns a civil engineering business in Temecula. “There are users out there that are fully automated, but the businesses we have here [in Building 1] … they have a lot of staff, they have a lot of designers.

“There’s work being done by people in these buildings. I think that line of thinking you mention is a bad generalization. It depends on who wants to be in here.”

Liesemeyer attended the groundbreaking along with Mayor Pro Tem Lesa Sobek and council member Dean Deines. The City of Menifee did not send any staff members to the event. Scott Agajanian, economic development director for the City of Murrieta, said there will be a great benefit for the surrounding area.

“We want to support the project and the City of Menifee,” Agajanian said. “Jobs like this help everybody; they help the City of Murrieta because our residents are right there [pointing south]. We’re not so foolish to think that the people in the new residential corridor coming in on the east side of the City are all going to work at Kaiser. You have to blend it a little bit. It also offers cities the opportunity to prove the concept, to show, ‘Hey, we need more of this.’

“This is flex industrial. You don’t see smokestacks coming out of this. Industrial is a word that I think is getting misused. This isn’t heavy industrial. These are small mom and pop business owners. This isn’t heavy, this isn’t polluting. This is jobs.”

Construction is expected to be complete in early 2022. Following that, phase 2 will continue with buildings to the south of Ciccotti Street. This is all part of the City of Menifee’s southern Economic Development Corridor.

“We are building this in keeping with Menifee’s attention to detail,” Bentrott said. “They asked us to flip this building over to have the loading be on the interior drive aisle [rather than facing the freeway]. We’re happy to try to accommodate them on that.

“These buildings, they cater to what I call integrated companies that have marketing, sales, light manufacturing. They are buildings that have the potential to develop some decent job growth here in the city.”