The development kicked off with a 343,000-sf multi-tenant spec facility set for completion this spring, but it is two buildings with more than one million sf each that hold the promise for significant future revenue enhancement, according to John Morgan, AMB vice president, development, east region, and Steven Campbell, senior vice president and director of environmental and development services. The potential source of revenue is solar power.

"Many of our buildings have a million sf of roof area or more," notes Morgan. "You need about one megawatt of power to run that building. That translates to about 100,000 sf of photovoltaic cells, which means you have 900,000 sf remaining where you could generate another nine megawatts of power."

Theoretically, says Morgan, a building owner could sell the excess power back to the local utility company, but currently there are obstacles to doing so. The more serious obstacle is a regulatory environment, which varies somewhat from state to state, that limits the amount of energy that can be returned to the utility grid for compensation.