All real estate is local. While that paradigm holds true for warehouses, the most interesting aspect of industrial real estate is that the opposite is also true. It is the only property type in which an Ohio manufacturer who outsources production to China can end up creating demand for logistics space in Southern California’s Inland Empire. That is exactly what has happened during the last decade.

The expanding world of e-commerce is rapidly and forever changing the way that goods are bought and sold — as well as how they are transported, stored and distributed. Industrial developers, owners and investors who can provide the types of facilities that e-commerce needs will survive and thrive during the next decade. But forecasting and understanding those needs is no easy task.

A recent JLL report reveals that real estate near airports “is commanding high rent premiums in mature logistics corridors.” Which airport markets offer the best investment and development opportunities over the next decade? The table and graph below provide some guidance.

Building owners and managers now can install flat-screen computer monitors in their building lobbies that will furnish real-time snapshots of all local transportation options, customized to each building’s location. TransitScreen, a new system currently available in 15 North American cities plus Honolulu, enables building tenants and visitors to select the best way to get home while also spotlighting the building as a transit hub.

Local governments have long used zoning ordinances to separate manufacturing facilities (and the noise and pollution they produced) from residential, office and other commercial uses in U.S. cities. But over time, traditional manufacturing facilities (and the jobs they created) began to relocate away from large cities, first to parts of the country that offered cheaper labor and land, then offshore. Today, many of the manufactured goods purchased in the U.S. are made in other countries.

When the Central Florida Intermodal Logistics Center opened this spring in Winter Haven, it created not only what is considered to be the most technologically advanced freight logistics terminal in the nation, but also one that could well become an economic engine for the region.

Perhaps nothing tests the talents of a top executive more than an emergency. For example, the president of a construction company’s Jacksonville, Fla., office was awakened at his hotel at 3 a.m. and told that one of his buildings was on fire and that, tragically, three people had already died. He was needed in a meeting room in five minutes, where his senior management team was assembled and awaiting his direction.

An assortment of brief facts and figures about new and noteworthy development projects, transactions and trends.