Capital Wasteland
By Charles Fallon
November 15, 2013| 2 min read
One of our clients needs 200,000 sq.ft in a specific corner of the United States. This week, the search team criss-crossed 2 states, visiting a short-list of buildings in 6 different counties. Squeezed in to 2 days, the trip is a logistics wonder and only gives us 30 minutes or so in any given building.
Sometimes, we could knock a building off the minute we rolled onto the site; but more times than not, the candidate facility would work for our needs. The viability of so many abandoned industrial buildings certainly helps my client: it is, for them, a buyers’ market. Still, it is remarkable to see so much capital sitting idle, tied up to buildings that don’t serve their purpose anymore.
This isn’t a string of 30 year old buildings with low height and quirky design; these were a slate of relatively young facilities, if not built after 2000, then subject to major renovations within the last 5 years. Somehow, the companies that owned and operated those facilities had no foresight about the imminent futility of those important investments. Whether through acquisition and subsequent re-location or outsourcing production overseas, these buildings were abandoned without a reasonable expectation of recouping the capital locked up in them.
LIDD’s tagline, “Capital is Precious”, popped into my head as I walked the dusty floors of these once-vibrant facilities. Too many companies don’t think that way and the legacy of that wasteful spending are empty building waiting for a reason to exist; communities eager to fill those eyesores with decent, stable jobs.
Reach out to the LIDD team to learn more about warehouse slotting and optimizing your warehouse operations.