Commercial Services / Site Selection
Site selection advisory for manufacturers, distributors, logistics companies, service businesses, owner-users and expanding companies evaluating facilities across Austin and Central Texas.
Choosing a facility location is a business decision before it is a real estate decision. The right building or site must support the company's operations, labor force, customers, suppliers, transportation needs, utilities, capital plan and future growth. A property can look attractive on price and still become an expensive mistake if it creates operating inefficiency, lacks adequate power, restricts truck movement, requires an unrealistic development timeline or leaves the company with no practical room to expand. A disciplined site-selection process turns those operational requirements into measurable real estate criteria and compares alternatives on total business impact rather than asking rent or purchase price alone.
The most effective site searches do not begin with available properties. They begin with a clear definition of what the company is trying to accomplish. A distributor serving Central Texas has a different location problem from a precision manufacturer recruiting engineers and technicians. A contractor with a fleet and outside-storage requirement has different priorities from an e-commerce operation focused on parcel delivery. A company consolidating several facilities may value access and labor retention more heavily than a business entering Austin for the first time.
I work with companies to translate operating needs into a practical real estate strategy before the search becomes property driven. That can include defining geography, size, clear height, loading, office percentage, power, yard area, parking, employee access, trailer requirements, specialized infrastructure, expansion capacity, occupancy timing and financial parameters. The objective is to create a screen that eliminates properties that cannot work and makes the remaining options easier to compare objectively.
Site selection can involve leasing an existing industrial building, buying an owner-user property, acquiring land, pursuing a build-to-suit, expanding an existing facility or evaluating multiple Central Texas communities. In many assignments, the best answer is not obvious at the beginning. A disciplined process allows the alternatives to compete against one another.
Identify lease and purchase opportunities that fit the operating requirement, then test physical functionality, economics, timing and long-term flexibility.
Evaluate sites, infrastructure, development constraints, jurisdiction, entitlement path, construction assumptions and delivery timing when existing inventory does not solve the requirement.
Compare Austin-area submarkets and surrounding communities using the factors that matter most to the company rather than treating every industrial location as interchangeable.
A useful requirement is specific enough to guide the search but flexible enough to avoid eliminating good solutions too early. Before approaching the market, I typically organize the requirement into operational, physical, geographic, financial and timing criteria.
The company should define both today's requirement and a realistic future requirement. Taking too much space creates unnecessary occupancy cost. Taking too little can create another relocation problem before the company has recovered from the first move. For growing companies, expansion rights, adjacent land, neighboring suites or a building configuration that permits future enlargement can be material parts of the decision.
Building depth, bay spacing, clear height, floor loading, fire protection, loading ratio, dock-high doors, grade-level doors, truck-court depth, trailer positions and circulation all affect how efficiently an industrial operation can use a building. These characteristics should be evaluated against the actual workflow rather than generic industrial standards.
Industrial users can require anything from minimal office finish to substantial engineering, training, laboratory, showroom or customer-facing space. Existing office percentage matters because converting office back to warehouse—or adding significant new office—can materially change cost and schedule. Parking and employee amenities may also become limiting factors for labor-intensive operations.
Contractors, service companies, building-material suppliers, fleet operators and some manufacturers may need secure outside storage, vehicle staging, equipment parking or trailer storage. A large lot does not automatically mean those uses are allowed. Zoning, site-plan restrictions, lease language, deed restrictions, screening standards, impervious cover and fire access can all affect usable yard area.
Manufacturing and technical operations may require heavy electrical service, natural gas, process water, compressed air, cranes, reinforced floors, specialized ventilation, clean areas, temperature control, wastewater capacity or unusual life-safety systems. Those requirements should be identified early because they can dramatically narrow the building and site universe.
“Austin” is not a single industrial market. The region includes distinct employment centers, transportation corridors, municipalities and development environments. A location that works extremely well for one company can be inefficient for another because the operating geography is different.
North and northeast Austin-area markets can provide access to major employment growth, manufacturing activity and expanding communities such as Pflugerville, Round Rock, Hutto, Georgetown and Taylor. East and southeast locations can offer strong regional highway access, airport proximity, larger development sites and connections toward Bastrop and the State Highway 130 corridor. South Austin, Buda, Kyle and San Marcos can serve companies oriented toward the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio. Closer-in central, north-central, southwest and northwest industrial locations may carry a higher real estate basis but can be valuable to businesses whose employees, customers or service territories are concentrated nearby.
The site-selection process should therefore define what “good location” actually means. Is it fifteen minutes from a specific customer? Is it direct access to I-35, SH 130, US 183 or another freight route? Is it minimizing employee commute disruption? Is airport access critical? Does the company need to remain within a particular utility service area, municipality, school district, tax jurisdiction or supplier network? These questions are more useful than simply drawing a radius on a map.
For many industrial and manufacturing companies, labor is one of the largest operating costs and one of the most important site-selection variables. A facility is only useful if the company can recruit and retain the people needed to operate it.
Workforce analysis should consider where current employees live, where future employees are likely to come from, the skill levels required, competing employers, commute patterns, highway bottlenecks, public transportation where relevant, shift schedules and the availability of nearby housing at wage levels the company can support. When a company is relocating within Central Texas, employee retention can be as important as recruitment. Moving a facility across the region may look modest on a map while creating a significant commute penalty for the existing workforce.
Different operations also draw from different labor pools. A high-skill advanced manufacturing operation may emphasize proximity to technical talent, education and supplier ecosystems. A distribution center with large shift employment may focus on access to deep population bases and reliable highway connections. A service company may care most about where technicians live relative to daily customer routes.
Real estate cost should therefore be considered in context. Saving several dollars per square foot can be a poor trade if the location increases turnover, overtime, recruiting cost or route inefficiency. The site-selection model should recognize that the cheapest building can create the highest total operating cost.
Industrial users evaluate transportation at multiple levels. Regional access determines how efficiently goods and people move through Central Texas. Local access determines whether trucks can actually reach, enter and leave the site without creating operational friction.
Proximity to I-35, SH 130, US 183, US 290 and other major corridors may influence freight time, customer reach and employee access. But straight-line distance is not enough. Congestion patterns, interchange access, direction of travel and the location of the company's actual customers and suppliers should be considered.
A property can be close to a highway and still perform poorly for trucks. Driveway geometry, medians, signalization, bridge clearances, neighborhood streets, turning restrictions, weight limitations and peak traffic can all matter. For high-frequency truck operations, the final mile deserves as much attention as the regional map.
Once trucks reach the property, they still need to maneuver. Truck courts, dock configuration, trailer staging, employee parking, fire lanes and yard circulation should be tested against real vehicle movements. A building that technically has enough dock doors may still be inefficient if the court is too shallow or circulation conflicts with parked cars and delivery vehicles.
Some companies place meaningful value on proximity to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, rail infrastructure, semiconductor and manufacturing clusters, major suppliers or specific customer concentrations. These factors should be included when they affect the company's daily economics rather than added simply because they are traditional site-selection checklist items.
Utilities can eliminate an otherwise excellent industrial site. This is especially true for manufacturing, data-intensive operations, food production, laboratories and other users with substantial electrical, water or wastewater demands.
A listing may say that three-phase power is available, but that does not establish whether the building can support the intended operation. Companies should identify voltage, amperage, redundancy and future load requirements as early as possible. Existing service, transformer capacity, utility infrastructure, upgrade cost and delivery timing should be verified when power is mission critical.
Water and wastewater capacity can affect both existing buildings and development sites. Process users may have requirements well beyond ordinary domestic service. For land, the location and capacity of lines, extension obligations, impact fees, service agreements and timing can materially change development economics.
Natural gas, high-capacity fiber, redundant communications, process water or other infrastructure may be important to specialized users. The key is to distinguish a preference from a true operating requirement. True requirements become gating criteria; preferences should be scored against competing benefits.
Site selection often exposes a second decision: what real estate structure best supports the company? Leasing, acquiring an existing facility and developing a new building each offer different advantages.
Leasing can preserve capital, provide flexibility and allow a company to occupy space faster when suitable inventory exists. It can be particularly effective when growth is uncertain or real estate ownership is not central to the business strategy. The tradeoffs can include landlord control, limited customization, renewal risk, rent escalation and reduced ability to capture long-term real estate appreciation.
Ownership can provide control, fixed long-term occupancy, potential appreciation and the ability to tailor the property to the business. Financing may also make ownership attractive to qualifying owner-users. The company should consider the capital tied up in the acquisition, future expansion needs, maintenance responsibilities, exit liquidity and whether the building will remain useful if the business changes.
A new facility can be designed around the operation instead of forcing the operation into an existing building. This can create meaningful efficiency for specialized manufacturing, distribution, fleet or campus requirements. The tradeoff is a longer schedule and greater exposure to land, entitlement, utility, construction-cost and execution risk. A build-to-suit may be landlord funded, user owned or structured through a developer depending on the company's capital strategy.
I help clients compare these paths at the same time rather than assuming the transaction structure in advance. In a constrained market, a land or build-to-suit solution may outperform waiting for the perfect existing building. In other situations, the cost and time required to develop may make an imperfect but adaptable existing facility the better business answer.
Central Texas includes multiple cities, counties, utility providers, economic-development organizations and regulatory environments. Those differences can affect taxes, permitting, infrastructure, development standards, incentive opportunities and the speed at which a project can move forward.
Incentives may include property-related support, infrastructure participation, tax arrangements, grants, workforce programs or other project-specific tools depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the investment. They can be meaningful, particularly for projects involving substantial capital investment or job creation, but incentives should not rescue a location that is operationally weak.
The strongest site-selection process first identifies locations that work for the business and then evaluates how governmental costs, incentives and execution conditions affect the final ranking. Incentive terms, legal requirements and tax implications should be confirmed with the applicable public entities and qualified legal and tax professionals.
Permitting and development timing also deserve attention. A location that appears less expensive can become more costly if utility extensions, zoning changes, subdivision, access approvals or site-development requirements delay occupancy. Time has a real financial value when a company is adding capacity, consolidating operations or facing an expiring lease.
Asking rent, purchase price or land price is only one part of the economic comparison. The site-selection analysis should identify the costs that change between alternatives and convert them into a comparable framework.
For leased facilities, that can include base rent, NNN expenses, operating-expense growth, tenant improvements, moving cost, free rent, parking, utilities, maintenance obligations and expected renewal terms. For acquisitions, the analysis can include purchase price, financing, taxes, insurance, repairs, improvements, capital reserves and expected residual value. For development sites, the comparison should incorporate land basis, site yield, civil work, utilities, infrastructure, entitlement costs, construction, carrying cost and schedule risk.
The real estate model should then be connected to operating economics. A farther location may reduce occupancy cost but increase freight or labor cost. A more expensive building may eliminate millions of dollars of specialized improvements. A site with a higher land price may deliver substantially better building yield or save months of development time.
This is where disciplined comparison becomes valuable. Rather than allowing one visible number to dominate the decision, alternatives can be evaluated on a multi-year basis with the major operating, capital and risk differences identified.
Once the requirement is defined, I search the visible market and, when appropriate, supplement that inventory with direct outreach. Publicly marketed buildings are only part of the potential opportunity set. Some owners will consider a sale or lease even though the property is not actively marketed, particularly when approached with a credible requirement.
Off-market sourcing is most effective when the target is narrow enough to be actionable. “We need industrial space somewhere in Austin” is not an effective direct-sourcing assignment. “We need 25,000 to 40,000 square feet with outside storage, grade loading, heavy power and access to northeast Austin within nine months” creates a much more useful ownership target list.
For larger corporate requirements, the sourcing process can also include developers, landowners, municipalities and economic-development contacts. That allows existing buildings, speculative development, build-to-suit opportunities and land solutions to be compared instead of limiting the company to one transaction type.
Document the intended use, employment, facility size, loading, power, utilities, parking, yard, geography, budget, timing and future growth requirements.
Separate non-negotiable requirements from preferences and agree on how location, labor, logistics, real estate, utilities, cost and risk will be weighted.
Identify Austin and Central Texas submarkets or communities capable of supporting the operation and eliminate areas that fail critical access, workforce or infrastructure tests.
Review listed opportunities and pursue targeted off-market properties, developers or landowners when the public market does not provide enough viable options.
Compare candidates against the agreed criteria and focus tours and technical work on the properties with a credible path to occupancy.
Evaluate loading, circulation, employee access, office ratio, power, utilities, yard, parking, layout, expansion and specialized requirements before negotiating from an incomplete understanding.
Model lease, purchase or development alternatives on a consistent basis and identify major occupancy, capital, operating and timing differences.
Where possible, preserve competition among viable options so the company can compare economics and risk rather than becoming dependent on a single property too early.
Coordinate the property, title, survey, zoning, environmental, utility, engineering, construction and financial diligence appropriate to the selected transaction.
Move from transaction documents into design, permitting, improvements, construction, relocation and occupancy while tracking the schedule that drove the original site decision.
A site-selection advisor should do more than send listings. The value is in organizing the real estate process around the company's business priorities, identifying alternatives management may not see on its own, creating a defensible comparison, negotiating from market knowledge and helping the client avoid committing to a property before critical risks are understood.
My background spans more than two decades of real estate transactions and more than $2 billion in transaction experience. I advise companies and owners through industrial acquisitions, leasing, dispositions, investments, land and development decisions. That broader perspective is useful in site selection because a requirement may move between leasing, buying, land acquisition and development before the correct solution becomes clear.
I also understand that the real estate team is only one part of a larger project. Attorneys, architects, engineers, contractors, lenders, tax advisors, utility representatives and economic-development professionals may all become important depending on the assignment. My role is to keep the property strategy connected to the operating objective and help the company move through the real estate decision in an organized way.
Industrial site selection is the process of identifying and comparing locations, buildings or land based on the operating, financial and strategic needs of a business. The analysis can include labor, transportation, utilities, zoning, incentives, real estate cost, construction feasibility, taxes, permitting and long-term expansion capacity.
Companies should generally begin before a lease expiration, expansion deadline or facility requirement becomes urgent. The more complex the requirement—particularly for manufacturing, heavy power, specialized utilities, land development or build-to-suit projects—the more lead time should be allowed for market screening, negotiations, diligence, permitting and construction.
The right structure depends on capital availability, timing, growth expectations, specialized facility needs, financing, market inventory and the importance of controlling the real estate. A site-selection process should compare the economics and operational tradeoffs of leasing, acquiring an existing building and developing a new facility.
It can be extremely important, particularly for operations with a large workforce or specialized employees. Commute changes can affect employee retention, recruiting, attendance and overtime. For relocations, mapping the existing employee base against potential locations can help identify hidden labor risk.
The comparison should be based on the company's actual requirements. Relevant factors may include customer and supplier access, highways, workforce, real estate availability, rental or purchase cost, taxes, utilities, development conditions, airport access and future expansion. The best submarket for one industrial user may be the wrong location for another.
Yes. I can help identify power requirements as a core real estate screening criterion and coordinate the property-level investigation with ownership, utilities and technical professionals. Final capacity, upgrade requirements and engineering conclusions should be verified by the applicable utility and qualified electrical professionals.
Yes. Incentives can be evaluated as one part of the location decision. Final eligibility, economic terms and incentive agreements should be confirmed directly with the applicable governmental or economic-development entities and appropriate legal and tax advisors.
Yes. Once the requirement is clearly defined, targeted outreach can supplement listed inventory by identifying owners of buildings or land that appear to fit the company's size, geography, use, access, utility and timing requirements.
Yes. When existing inventory does not meet the operating requirement, a build-to-suit can be evaluated alongside lease and purchase alternatives. The process can include site identification, developer outreach, development economics, lease or ownership structure, utility feasibility and delivery timing.
A useful starting brief includes intended use, target occupancy date, preferred geography, building or acreage requirement, office-to-warehouse ratio, loading, clear height, power, utilities, parking, yard needs, employee count, truck activity, budget, lease-versus-buy preference and anticipated future growth.
My primary focus is Austin and Central Texas, including major industrial corridors and communities such as Round Rock, Pflugerville, Georgetown, Hutto, Taylor, Manor, Elgin, Bastrop, Buda, Kyle and San Marcos. Broader Texas requirements can also be evaluated depending on the assignment.
The first step is a requirements discussion. Before searching the market, we define what the facility must accomplish, what constraints are truly non-negotiable, the target timing and the financial framework. That becomes the basis for the market search and comparison process.
A major facility decision should produce more than a stack of listings. It should give management a clear understanding of the alternatives, the economics, the operational tradeoffs and the risks associated with each path.
If your company is expanding, relocating, consolidating facilities, entering Central Texas or evaluating a new manufacturing, warehouse, distribution, flex, service or owner-user facility, I can help define the requirement, source opportunities, compare locations and negotiate the real estate strategy through execution.
Call 512-565-0499 or email [email protected] to discuss your facility requirements, target geography, timing and industrial site-selection strategy.
If you are evaluating an Austin or Central Texas industrial site—or own land that may have industrial development potential—I can help you assess the opportunity, identify the issues that matter most and determine the right acquisition, sale or development strategy.
Whether you’re evaluating a commercial asset, land opportunity, or development site, the first step is a strategic conversation.
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