From left: Matt Galligan, William Silverman, Gary Bechtel/ Photo by Charles Garnar

NEW YORK CITY—Even at the “Balance and Flexibility: Capital Markets Update” panel at the RealShare New York 2018 conference, last mile distribution centers were the talk of the town. This was compounded with the conference falling on the date that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio jointly announced Amazon selected Long Island City, Queens as a new corporate headquarters.

William Silverman, managing director, group head at Hodges Ward Elliott, said at first there were three kinds of responses to multistory industrial properties. There were investors who said multistory would never happen. There was another group, which said multistory will happen but they wanted to wait and see others invest before making and move. Finally, there were those who said, “Game on.”

“In six months, we watched the market and obviously those who said, 'Game on' ruled the day,” said Silverman. “Several months later, when we were marketing a different site, everyone had shifted a category over.” The “That will never happen” group began to say, “I believe it's starting to happen,” with all groups increasing in enthusiasm for the asset class.