Industrial Rebound Fuels New Wave Of Speculative Projects

What were recently big, empty warehouses have once again become hot commodities, creating a development push to meet the demand. A wave of large-block requirements, rising logistics demand and fresh federal incentives for domestic manufacturing are collectively tightening vacancy and emboldening lenders, pushing speculative projects back into the pipeline. “There's going to be a huge competitive rush to start to try to satisfy those big requirements because that's a very easy exit for development,” said Peter Kroner, who leads industrial research for Avison Young. “If you can get a long-term lease signed in a million-square-footer, there's a lot of capital that would love that...