Keystone Innovation Industrial Park, a new development, is making headway in Vista. Badiee Development Inc. recently broke ground on a project with an estimated $16 million completion cost.
Executives anticipate that project values will swell to $20 million after the suites are leased at 1398 Keystone Way in Vista.
Ben Badiee, CEO of Badiee Development, has worked on and developed properties in San Diego County for 30 years. According to Badiee, the Keystone property is a 10-acre parcel — the largest undeveloped property in the city of Vista.
Civil engineers for the project were from Excel Engineering.
Design plans by Smith Consulting Architects include two buildings at The Keystone Innovation Industrial Park. Building one is 47,000 square feet with four suites, and building two is 30,790 square feet with three suites. All suites range in size.
TFW Construction will build Keystone Innovation Industrial Park.
Badiee said San Diego is famous for growing small and mid-size companies, which is why the developer designed multi-tenant innovation centers with different size spaces for various users.
“The reason we built this is to provide an amazing environment for fast-growing, high-tech companies for people in technology, manufacturing and robotics,” he said, adding that these are innovative businesses. “They can have their headquarters there, not to mention warehousing and distribution.”
Vista Economic Development Director Kevin Ham said the city is pleased to welcome this type of innovative industrial and commercial project to the city.
“Especially, those that help foster innovation in our city and along the Highway 78 Corridor,” Ham said.
Badiee selected broker Conor Boyle with Colliers International to vet potential innovative companies for leasing opportunities.
As far as the location, Keystone Innovation Industrial Park sits on top of a knoll and is visible from Palomar Airport and Mill roads.
Badiee said the reason it had never been developed was due to inherent environmental challenges.
“I can only say that the reason we managed to overcome the challenges was due to the hard work of a tremendous amount of people in our company, the consultants that we retained and the city of Vista who is an absolute pleasure to work with,” Badiee said.
The Keystone property overlooks Carlsbad and there are no nearby neighbors.
Badiee also credits the talent of their brokers Colliers International, Tucker Hohenstein and Mike Erwin.
“They alluded to the fact that this property has been available, but that it was a big challenge,” Badiee said. “And we have a history of taking on very challenging projects in the past.”
Badiee said his company scouted the Keystone property in 2015 and recently managed to secure all the entitlements and all the documents necessary to begin the grading.
An integral part of the negotiations included how many acres would be developed and remain untouched.
“Out of these 10 acres we dedicated five acres surrounding our property to be kept undisturbed. The city, the county and in general all of the environmental-related entities involved, they wanted the beauty of open space, which is why it was so challenging to get the entitlement,” he said. “We worked together to preserve that, and we dedicated five acres of our property to remain as open space.”
Badiee said the collaboration was important, because as a developer, they were not treating this property as a typical developer that wanted to maximize.
“While we want to build the most that we can, we are sensitive to keeping the beauty of the environment and allow five acres of this land to be dedicated in this way,” he said. “We conduct our affairs differently in our company and are socially responsible developers.”
