“Anywhere there is an energy boom,” Rutherford says, “you're going to see the real estate market change dramatically. It creates a business that has to be supported regionally which means jobs and a surge of economic activity in cities like Houston, Denver, Dallas and Pittsburgh.” Furthermore, the cities and towns that sit atop the shale formations have become the fastest growing small cities in the US. Williston, for example, has grown from about 12,000 residents to 37,000. “That has brought many benefits but many problems as well.”

“The man-camps are everywhere,” he explains, a reference to the vast collections of temporary housing that municipal officials worry will turn into slums. “They are anxious for developers to come up with plans for more permanent housing. But they also have a desperate need for more roads, hotels, retail, restaurants and grocery stores.”

However, the area has seen so little development for so many years that local banks and other local sources of capital can't satisfy the extraordinary demand. But Rutherford says that the right projects can find investors. A new industrial park in Williston, for example, would "lease like hotcakes.” The developer of such a project could promise prospective investors in Denver, Chicago and New York to “get it 100% leased before finishing construction.”

A few major developers have already started remaking the landscape. For example, Stropiq, an international real estate firm, has just launched Williston Crossing, a $500-million, open-air project that will provide 1-million-square-feet of retail, entertainment and hotel space, with a mix of office and residences. The company plans to break ground in March 2015 and finish the project by April 2017. A JLL team is handling the pre-development marketing efforts. Since September 2013, Stropiq has invested about $20 million in Williston projects.

“Little Hobbs in New Mexico is like Williston; it needs everything,” Rutherford says. But no two boom towns are alike. The type of real estate needed “depends on the character of each town.” A place like Eagle Ford in Texas seems to have enough multifamily housing. And Pittsburgh does not require new industrial parks. “There is plenty of industrial real estate there left over from the Rust Belt days.”

And the impact of the revolution in energy production will reach far beyond certain local markets. In fact, Rutherford expects that the boost in natural gas production will produce ripple effects throughout US manufacturing. The export of gas, for example, will require a new set of industrial infrastructure, including processing plants, in states like Texas, Louisiana, Colorado and Oklahoma. And the cheap electricity that will come from gas production will help “American manufacturing experience a renaissance for decades to come.”

Rutherford advises people to notice where the shale formations are located, regions like the Midwest, the Northeast and the South, because those areas will have the best access to inexpensive energy. “That is where manufacturing will probably blossom. That's where I would be focusing my investments in industrial real estate.”