The following article is sponsored by Panattoni Development Company.
Panattoni operates through more than 70 offices around the world, but some of the most important information we use to make development decisions still comes from a conversation with someone who knows the local market.
Often, that person is a broker.
A local real estate professional may know why a property has never traded, which landowner might finally be willing to sell, where infrastructure investment is headed or why two sites that look nearly identical on paper are anything but.
After 40 years of development, we have learned that global scale doesn't replace local market expertise. It makes it more valuable. That idea is at the heart of how Panattoni operates: think globally, develop locally.
Since Panattoni was founded in 1986, we have grown into a global development company with hundreds of millions of square feet developed around the world. Today, we work with companies whose real estate requirements may span multiple cities, states, countries and continents.
Yet we have deliberately maintained a local development model.
Rather than managing markets remotely from a centralized headquarters, Panattoni has built a network of local offices led by professionals who know their markets and have the ability, and the authority, to make decisions within them.
They know the brokers, landowners, contractors, utility providers, elected officials, jurisdictional staff and economic development organizations. They understand local entitlement processes, infrastructure constraints and development patterns. They also understand the relationships and history that influence how business gets done.
Our global platform provides those teams access to broader customer relationships, capital, experience and resources. Our local network gives us the ability to put those resources to work.
We need both.
Commercial real estate has access to more information than ever before.
We can analyze land availability, demographics, transportation networks, infrastructure, labor and market fundamentals with extraordinary speed. That information allows a global developer, and our customers, frankly, to evaluate opportunities across dozens of markets at once.
But a spreadsheet doesn't tell you everything.
It doesn't necessarily tell you that an owner has rejected offers for 20 years but may now be ready to have a conversation. It doesn't tell you that a planned infrastructure project could fundamentally change a submarket. It may not reveal the history behind a difficult entitlement or the community dynamics surrounding a particular property.
That is where experienced local brokers provide tremendous value.
The best brokers don't simply bring us available sites. They bring us market intelligence and the “why” we should buy a particular site.
They understand what is happening on the ground, often before it becomes visible in the data. For a company operating across multiple markets, that perspective can be the difference between identifying a property and identifying an opportunity.
A company may come to Panattoni with a multi-market requirement or a need that could potentially be satisfied in several regions. We can look across our platform and help determine which markets make sense.
Eventually, however, that global requirement has to become a local project.
A site may have to be assembled. Infrastructure has to work. Entitlements have to be achievable. Construction has to make economic sense. The workforce has to be available. And the project has to fit within the community where it will be developed within the required timeline.
This is particularly true for today's largest industrial, advanced manufacturing and data center developments. These projects can involve hundreds of acres, substantial infrastructure investment and years of planning and construction.
At that scale, knowing the market isn't a nice-to-have. It is fundamental to execution.
As customers become more sophisticated and requirements become more complex, the most valuable brokers are increasingly acting as strategic advisors rather than simply transaction facilitators.
They understand infrastructure. They know local development and entitlement processes. They recognize potential issues before a site is under contract. And they can help a developer understand not only whether land is available, but whether a project is realistically executable.
That expertise is particularly valuable to a company like Panattoni.
Our scale may allow us to bring opportunities into markets that originate somewhere else in the world. But local expertise helps us translate those opportunities into successful developments.
It is a partnership we rely on every day.
There is another reality that becomes increasingly important as projects get larger: every development eventually becomes part of a community.
No matter how global the customer, capital or requirement may be, the project itself will have neighbors. It will use local infrastructure. It will create local jobs and tax revenue. It will be reviewed by local officials and built by people who understand the region.
That requires developers to listen.
It also makes the relationships that local development teams and brokers have built over years or decades even more important.
Panattoni's global footprint has grown significantly since our first project 40 years ago, and we expect the commercial real estate industry to become even more interconnected in the years ahead.
But we don't believe that makes local expertise less important.
We believe it makes it more valuable.
The best opportunities happen when global perspective meets local knowledge: when a customer requirement from across the country or across the world connects with the right site, the right relationships and the right people on the ground.
That's how we have built Panattoni.
Think globally. Develop locally.