Construction of a massive one-million-square-foot industrial building has been completed about 20 miles northwest of Minneapolis. The kicker? The building has no tenants yet.

On Tuesday, commercial real estate giant CBRE announced that national developer CRG has completed construction of The Cubes at French Lake, a 1,006,880-square-foot industrial development on about 65 acres in Dayton. CBRE is serving as the site’s leasing broker.

The site is the state’s first “super-bulk inventory distribution facility,” CBRE officials said. The project was also constructed speculatively, or “spec” for short, meaning it was built ready for move-in without a specific tenant in mind. In the office market, spec projects have gained in popularity in recent history.

CRG’s new building is ideally designed to accommodate one or two tenants, but it has flexibility for more if demanded by the market, said CBRE senior vice president Dan Swartz said in an email to TCB.

“The building is fully vacant. We continue to tour the project with several prospective tenants and are pleased with the current activity,” Swartz said.

CRG first pitched the project at 11500 Dayton Parkway North in 2021 and began construction in earnest in 2022. The property includes a 40-foot-tall industrial space, along with a 652-space parking lot, a concrete truck court, 231 trailer parking spaces, 100 dock doors with 69 reserved for future expansion, and four drive-in dock doors.

CRG partnered with designer Lamar Johnson Collaborative, and its parent company, Clayco, to complete the project. CRG is the development and investment arm of Chicago-based Clayco.

Industrial leasing remained strong in Minnesota in 2023, according to a fourth-quarter industrial building market report by Colliers. This resulted in the Minneapolis-St. Paul warehouse market seeing 23% rent growth.

While the end-of-year report noted an increase in the construction of speculative suites in the last year, Colliers vice president Evan Molde, noted in the report that this speculative construction is unlikely to continue to the same scale in 2024. “In 2024, the Minneapolis-St. Paul industrial market expects minimal new speculative development, with a stronger focus on 2025 starts. Developers are leaning towards build-to-suits over speculative projects showing a cautious and client-focused approach to development,” Molde said.