Industrial Plants Getting a Re-Design

CHICAGO—The American landscape is littered with vacant industrial buildings that have outlived their usefulness. This can create a monumental burden for cities and regions that have suffered from economic turmoil. According to a recent federal study, for example, for Detroit the cost to tear down its abandoned industrial buildings and ready the sites for other uses could run as high as $1 billion.

And with many developers in the US gearing up to build the next generation of industrial facilities, the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors and the Industrial Asset Management Council have joined together to do a series of studies on how developers can extend the lifecycle of new buildings by making them flexible enough for quick and efficient repurposing if business needs change.