Bringing Industrial properties to a community has huge benefits. Industrial properties bring jobs to the community and even make city leaders happy by bringing tax revenue.
However, the downside with industrial properties is that it comes with increased traffic, odors, noise, and various types of pollution. This is the very reason why industrial lands have to be away from residential zones and neighborhoods.
Industrial zones are usually located in remote locations and usually in the outskirts of a city or town. However, the benefit that they have is that they usually have great access to major roadways and cost saving infrastructure.
Developers are often looking for industrial properties to convert them into condominiums or high priced shops. This usually has a major impact on businesses and job opportunities. Communities that have these types of land are usually against the developers and often in conflict to stop them from acquiring these lands.
8 Different Industrial Property Types
Are you in the market for an industrial property but aren’t quite sure the differences between the types of properties? Here are a few brief descriptions of the eight major industrial property types:
- Warehouse/Distribution Buildings
These buildings range from 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of square feet in one single-story structure used mainly for warehousing and distributing business inventory. They also have up to 60-foot ceilings, as well as numerous loading docks, truck doors, and large parking lots to accommodate semi-trailers. They may have a small amount of office space and may be served by rail cars.
- Manufacturing Buildings (aka heavy industrial buildings)
These facilities are intended to house specialized equipment used to produce goods or materials. They typically have three-phase high capacity, electric power, these properties might also include heavy ductwork, pressurized air or water lines, buss ducts, high capacity ventilation and exhaust systems, floor drains, storage tanks and cranes.
- Refrigeration/Cold Storage Buildings
These specialized industrial properties are equipped to hold a large capacity of cold storage and/or freezer space, and are typically used a distribution center for food products.
- Telecom/Data Hosting Centers (aka Switching Centers, Cyber Centers, Web Hosting Facilities, Telecom Centers)
These highly specialized industrial buildings are located close to major communications trunk lines to allow for access to an extremely large and redundant power supply capable of powering extensive computer servers and telecom switching equipment. They typically have reinforced floor slabs to support the weight of the equipment, as well as backup generators and specialized HVAC.
- Flex Buildings
This building type is capable of housing wide range of uses, typically more than one in a single facility, including office space, research and development, showroom retail sales, light manufacturing research and development, and even small warehouse and distribution uses. They typically feature lower ceilings (under 18 feet) and a higher amount of office space than other industrial property types.
- Light Manufacturing Buildings
Light manufacturing that doesn’t require extensive physical plant and space requirements typically provided by heave industrial buildings can take place in flex buildings.
- R&D Buildings
High technology industries, such as computers, electronics, and biotechnology, prefer flex buildings because they offer a wide range of uses in one location, including office, manufacturing, and warehouse space. Nowadays, many of these spaces are converted to campus-like business parks with landscaping, shared architecture design, and lots of surface parking and open space.
- Showroom Buildings
Showroom buildings combine retail display space with extensive onsite storage and distribution. These buildings typically include up to 50% of space dedicated to sales.
