A State Full of Warehouses

There's been a lot of talk about the aborted Amazon deal in Queens, and many commentaries on the pros and cons of the decision.  Let's not lose sight of the fact that we have a big--gigantic, even--warehouse going up in North Haven.  Although distribution centers lack the glamour of headquarters buildings, and admittedly have many fewer employees per square foot, they certainly boost the local economy in many ways.

Connecticut, with its prime location between Boston and New York, has long been a place from which companies served both of those markets.  Even as the world becomes more technological, and much more things are done online and in the cloud, there are still more and more physical objects that get moved around daily.  Many more shoppers go online to buy, as opposed to driving to a traditional mall.  Streets are littered with FedEx and UPS trucks, and 54 cents of every advertising dollar is now spent online.

That should mean that our future in this state will depend upon our ability to help manufacturers and middlemen move goods from place to place, especially in the Northeast Corridor.  We are well suited for that, as long as we begin to focus more on our infrastructure.  The transportation lockbox in Hartford will be key for improving our roads and rails.  But geography, and our much lower real estate prices, are on our side.

Properties that are built as warehouses, distribution spaces, or flex spaces, and those that can be rehabbed into those types, are ripe for the picking.