In the third quarter of 2026, two tenants left warehouses in Cushman & Wakefield's Eastside industrial submarket. Fanatics vacated its 222,000-square-foot building at Oak Creek Commerce Park I, and Got-Rack.com vacated the 155,000-square-foot Steel Service Center. Together that is about 377,000 square feet. All the industrial leasing signed in the Eastside that quarter added up to about 376,000 square feet.
In September, while that space was emptying, EastGroup Properties paid $13,266,000 for 30.3 more acres at Crossroads Logistics Park in East Tampa, or about $438,000 an acre.
Both facts point the same way. Much of the vacancy number published in October records large existing buildings between tenants and new buildings arriving empty. Owners with full portfolios are treating it as a temporary gap. For anyone leasing or buying East Tampa industrial space, the date to plan around is late 2027, when a cluster of space that has already been funded is scheduled to come online at roughly the same time.
Two buildings and a wave of deliveries behind the 8.7%
Cushman & Wakefield's Q3 2026 Tampa Bay industrial MarketBeat put Eastside warehouse/distribution vacancy at 8.7%, up 140 basis points year over year. The submarket also took more than 462,000 square feet of new deliveries in Q3 alone, including the 143,000-square-foot Causeway Logistics Center Building 1, and the report described the submarket increases as largely supply-driven. The report's completions table shows Building 1 at 143,100 square feet with no major tenant.
The Fanatics move-out had been on the calendar for months. Supply Chain Dive reported in November 2025 that the company planned to close its Oak Creek distribution center on July 31, 2026. The company said the facility could no longer support its scale, technology and innovation needs. So the space didn't go vacant because East Tampa logistics demand suddenly fell. The tenant had decided the building no longer fit its operation.
The leasing decline needs the same reading. Eastside leasing fell 54.4% year over year in Q3, and the submarket still led all of Tampa Bay in total leasing volume. Across the region, Q3 leasing volume fell 38.1% while the number of signed leases fell only 6.8%, to 82. Deals got smaller, but the number of deals held up. In a quarter with only one lease over 100,000 square feet in the whole region, a 222,000-square-foot vacancy was always going to show up in the totals.
The owner planning work on Oak Creek is also buying land
EastGroup's third-quarter 2026 results, released October 21, list a project called Oak Creek 1. It is a 222,000-square-foot redevelopment in Tampa, the same size as the building Fanatics left, with a projected cost of $4.2 million and an anticipated transfer to the operating portfolio in October 2027. That works out to under $19 per square foot, compared with roughly $172 per square foot for the 156,000-square-foot Crossroads 3 new build on the same list.
The same release covers the Crossroads Phase 2 land purchase, which grows the planned park from three buildings totaling about 500,000 square feet to five buildings totaling about 850,000 square feet. It also lists Crossroads 3, with a projected cost of $26.9 million, scheduled for October 2027.
EastGroup is buying from a nearly full position. TBBW reported in September that as of August 31, the company's roughly 66.8-million-square-foot portfolio was 97.1% leased, and its July and August new and renewal leases raised rents an average of 23.1% on a cash basis. TBBW also reported that the company primarily targets distribution users between 20,000 and 100,000 square feet. An owner that is nearly full and re-leasing at higher rents sees one vacant Tampa building as inventory to sell, not as a warning. Cushman & Wakefield read the wider market the same way, describing continued speculative development as a sign of long-term confidence in Tampa Bay fundamentals.
What land prices show about which space is scarce
Land prices are where that confidence shows up in dollars, and they vary widely by parcel. Business Observer reported that GTIS Partners bought the 116-acre 4Ward Logistics Center site at 2898 N. 62nd St. for $20.5 million, about $177,000 an acre. The plan there is two distribution buildings totaling 382,500 square feet, with completion expected in late 2027.
EastGroup's Crossroads acreage cost about two and a half times as much per acre. The difference comes from what each site is built to serve. A large tract carrying two big distribution buildings competes for a small number of large-block tenants, and Q3 produced only one lease over 100,000 square feet across all of Tampa Bay. A multi-building park sized for 20,000-to-100,000-square-foot users competes for the deal size that kept getting signed through the slowdown.
Other recent East Tampa deals point to the same mid-size bay range:
- Iron Bull at Sabal Park, at 3322 U.S. 301 behind the Dallas Bull, is Foundry Commercial's two-building speculative development on nearly 12 acres. Foundry closed on the site in June 2026. Its October property page offers buildings of 47,528 and 100,551 square feet with Q4 2027 delivery.
- The Pioneer Park and Solar Drive portfolio, a 169,055-square-foot, three-building set at 5501 and 5519 Pioneer Park Blvd. and 9704 Solar Drive, was bought by East Capital Partners and Westport Capital Partners with $23.15 million in financing. Business Observer reported in July that it was 90% occupied by 11 tenants, with a mix of office and warehouse space.
- Lakeview Corporate Park, at 6700 Lakeview Center Drive, is Richland Capital's conversion of a former office campus into two Class A distribution buildings totaling 309,695 square feet, with delivery anticipated in Q1 2027.
An existing multi-tenant property at 90% occupancy with 11 tenants, in the same quarter that a single-tenant 222,000-square-foot building went dark, shows how the vacancy is spread. It sits in the big single-tenant boxes and the new buildings. The smaller bays are mostly occupied.
The real test comes in late 2027
Cushman & Wakefield counted 1.3 million square feet under construction across Tampa Bay at the end of Q3. Eastside accounted for 1.2 million of it, and the report said all of the space under construction was available for lease. Here is the schedule for the named East Tampa-area projects, based on what their owners have published:
| Project | Size (sq. ft.) | Scheduled timing | Status as reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lakeview Corporate Park, 6700 Lakeview Center Dr. | 309,695 | Q1 2027 | Under construction |
| Crossroads 3, Crossroads Logistics Park | 156,000 | October 2027 | Started in 2026 |
| Oak Creek 1 | 222,000 | October 2027 | Redevelopment |
| Iron Bull at Sabal Park, 3322 U.S. 301 | 148,079 | Q4 2027 | Entire project offered for lease |
| 4Ward Logistics Center, 2898 N. 62nd St. | 382,500 | Late 2027 | Planned completion |
The last four rows add up to about 908,000 square feet scheduled for the final quarter of 2027. Some of these dates could slip, since they are projections. Even so, this is a far bigger supply event than the Q3 move-outs, and it is the one current leasing and pricing decisions should be planned around. Across EastGroup's whole development and value-add program of 21 projects in 14 markets, 25% was leased as of October 20, according to TBBW.
Rents and leverage heading into the 2027 deliveries
Asking rents haven't softened. Tampa Bay's weighted average industrial asking rent reached a record $11.30 per square foot in Q3 2026, up 11.1% year over year. Hillsborough County averaged $11.06, up 5.1% from the prior quarter and 11.5% from a year earlier. Cushman & Wakefield tied part of that increase to new buildings listed at premium rents because of construction costs. It also cautioned that softer leasing and rising availability could slow future gains.
Asking rents are what owners hope to get. What tenants actually pay is settled at signing, in free rent, improvement allowances and lease length. That gives each type of participant a specific way to use this cycle:
- Tenants with leases expiring in 2027 or 2028 can start talks before the October 2027 cluster delivers. In those talks, the Oak Creek, Crossroads, Iron Bull and 4Ward timelines count as real alternatives, not hypothetical ones.
- Tenants who need 20,000 to 100,000 square feet now are competing in the part of the market where Pioneer Park reported 90% occupancy. Expect less room to negotiate there than the 8.7% headline suggests.
- Investors underwriting existing big-box buildings should model the lease-up time it takes to replace a single tenant. Oak Creek 1 shows the pattern: vacant by mid-2026, scheduled to return to service in October 2027.
- Investors in multi-tenant small-bay space should stress-test rent growth against the new competition. Most of the 2027 product sits above their tenants' size range, but Iron Bull's 47,528-square-foot building and the Crossroads park will compete with them directly.
For more background, see how Tampa's logistics boom is changing industrial site selection and how cap rates work in Tampa's commercial market.
Quick answers
Is East Tampa industrial oversupplied? In the Q3 2026 report, Cushman & Wakefield said both Hillsborough and Pinellas remained below the 10% vacancy level it uses as a sign of oversupply. Hillsborough stood at 8.9%.
Why does Crossroads land cost more per acre than 4Ward? Crossroads was planned as a five-building park for mid-size distribution users. 4Ward was a 116-acre tract planned for two large buildings. Price per acre follows the tenant pool a site is built to serve.
When does tenant leverage peak? Based on published schedules, it peaks in the last quarter of 2027, when Crossroads 3, Oak Creek 1, Iron Bull and 4Ward are all expected to come online.
If you're weighing a lease renewal, a relocation or an acquisition timed to East Tampa's 2027 deliveries, Alan J. Kronenberg can model how the new supply affects your terms building by building, whether you're a tenant or a landlord. Let's Connect.
