Atlanta has four 12 buildings with more than 13 million square feet. According to CBRE, the busiest markets for on-going construction of 1 million-square-foot warehouses are led by the Inland Empire, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Across the 10 busiest US markets for this type of industrial construction, 29 such facilities are underway.

“The spread of these big-box facilities tells us several things,” says David Egan, CBRE's Head of Industrial & Logistics Research in the Americas. “Primarily, it underscores the rapid growth of e-commerce, since these megafacilities serve as the backbone of retailers' fulfillment networks, distributing goods across multistate regions. Additionally, developers prefer to build these big boxes in industrial-powerhouse metros that offer the best combination of exceptional transportation access and close proximity to big populations favored by e-commerce users.”

While massive warehouses aren't purely a phenomenon of e-commerce, the two are closely related, CBRE reports. E-commerce users typically need two to three times the amount of warehouse and distribution space that traditional users do. That's mostly because e-commerce fulfillment requires more inventory, labor and automation.

ATLANTA—A proliferation of warehouses spanning 1 million square feet or larger. That's a big trend the rapid growth of e-commerce has created in US industrial markets.

According to CBRE, the massive warehouses and distribution centers are most prevalent in Southern California and Philadelphia. There are clusters of mega warehouses around metro areas that provide the mix of road, rail and sea access that e-commerce users covet. And Atlanta is heavy in the mix at fourth place.

“During this cycle, one major trend for large industrial users has been focusing on speed to market, which has been brought on by the explosion in e-commerce demand,” Trey Barry, CBRE National Partners, Industrial, tells GlobeSt.com. “Users are struggling to keep pace with this growth in their supply chain networks. As a result, users are looking for bigger blocks of space close to major metropolitan areas and prefer buildings either already constructed or close to completion in order to hit their tight timelines. This has been one of the largest trends impacting the success of the bulk speculative developers in Atlanta.”

All told, 117 mega industrial facilities were built across the US from 2010 to 2016. These span 141.2 million square feet. That's an increase from the 99 facilities built between 2003 and 2009, CBRE reports. The markets in which the most big-box construction occurred in the 2010-2016 timeframe are led by Philadelphia, California's Inland Empire and Dallas/Fort Worth.

Atlanta has four 12 buildings with more than 13 million square feet. According to CBRE, the busiest markets for on-going construction of 1 million-square-foot warehouses are led by the Inland Empire, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Across the 10 busiest US markets for this type of industrial construction, 29 such facilities are underway.

“The spread of these big-box facilities tells us several things,” says David Egan, CBRE's Head of Industrial & Logistics Research in the Americas. “Primarily, it underscores the rapid growth of e-commerce, since these megafacilities serve as the backbone of retailers' fulfillment networks, distributing goods across multistate regions. Additionally, developers prefer to build these big boxes in industrial-powerhouse metros that offer the best combination of exceptional transportation access and close proximity to big populations favored by e-commerce users.”

While massive warehouses aren't purely a phenomenon of e-commerce, the two are closely related, CBRE reports. E-commerce users typically need two to three times the amount of warehouse and distribution space that traditional users do. That's mostly because e-commerce fulfillment requires more inventory, labor and automation.