Bridge Industrial, an acquisition and development firm that specializes in industrial real estate, will soon celebrate the grand opening of Bridge Point Long Beach, a massive, 415,320-square-foot Class A warehouse situated in the industrial district of North Long Beach.

The Long Beach Planning Commission approved the development in 2019 as a project that would decommission a parcel of land that previously housed a petroleum refinery equivalent to roughly 13 football fields.

After three years of construction, towering clerestory glass exteriors can be seen by motorists driving through the Artesia and Paramount intersection where the warehouse is located.

Lease negotiations are underway to secure a tenant for the building, but due to the nature of the ongoing negotiations the company cannot publicly disclose who the potential tenant will be, said Heather Crossner, Bridge Industrial’s senior vice president of development.

A statement from media relations firm Antenna Group on the Bridge Point Project said the building was pre-leased prior to its completion in August to a “leading transportation and logistics provider of choice for the U.S. Postal Service for its warehousing and distribution operations.” The undisclosed company will begin its occupancy in September and is seeking to hire several hundred new employees, according to the media firm.

Those logistics and transportation services will take place at a strategic point in the city because of the warehouse’s proximity to the 91 and 710 freeways and the Port of Long Beach, Kevin Finnigan, Bridge Industrial director of acquisitions and leasing, said.

“There’s so many people that want to occupy in the South Bay market and there’s so few buildings under construction,” Finnigan said. “That creates a good supply and demand factor.”

The warehouse features 61 truck parking spaces and an office layout expandable to 40,000 square feet. There are environmentally sustainable features as well, such as 100 parking spaces for electric vehicles and charging stations as well solar panels installed along the roof of the warehouse.

Tuckley Williams, Bridge Industrial’s development manager, said construction crews first were tasked with taking down portions of the previous refinery’s infrastructure.

Crews broke ground in 2019 to clean up contaminated soil that was left behind from operations of the previous refinery. Williams said crews removed over 6,000 tons of the soil.

“It was a huge investment that we had to make to carefully take down all of the infrastructure, take out all of the contaminants,” Crossner said. “It was a monumental effort to take down what was there.”

The introduction of the new warehouse also serves as a bookend to private development on the eastern industrial side of Artesia Boulevard, a stretch of road that has recently seen retail development on its western end.

Councilman Rex Richardson said the completion of the project could bring more jobs and set a standard for other industrial developments moving forward.

“The Bridge Point project has transformed the site of the Edgington Refinery, an outdated petroleum operation that has stood in North Long Beach for more than 75 years,” Richardson said.

Richardson, who sits on the South Coast Air Quality Management District board, said the new warehouse will have to run on cleaner, sustainable sources of energy thanks to a mandate the board passed in May.

The policy, known as the Warehouse Indirect Source Rule, imposes requirements on facilities seen as “indirect sources” of pollutants because of the emissions from trucks and other vehicles operating there. The rule applies to warehouses greater than 100,000 square feet, which includes Bridge Point Long Beach.

“The new facility is modern, sets a new standard for architecture and aesthetics on Artesia Boulevard and is a new gateway to the Paramount Boulevard industrial corridor,” Richardson said. “It paves the way for more local jobs for our residents and modern regulatory standards to clean our air.”