Industrial Insights

Justin Smith
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Investing
  • Updated Weekly

Industrial Insights is a podcast that highlights the market dynamics, high level strategies, and in the trenches tactics for tenants and owners of industrial real estate. Each episode is designed to take hard fought wisdom from practitioners and break it down into insights that can drive better commercial real estate decision making. The host, Justin Smith, shares his experiences from 16 years in the business and brings in industry experts to discuss critical aspects of successful industrial projects.

  1. 19h ago

    The Long View: Jack Cline on L.A. Industrial

    I sat down with Jack Cline, President of Lee & Associates Downtown Los Angeles, to talk about the buildings he holds, the market he knows and the brokerage business he is still building. We cover Vernon and Commerce, power for data centers, a changing choice of buildings for sale, Bill Lee's broker-owned model, using Claude to work through office economics, building young brokers and the books Jack gives away. I also share what ownership and a loan rate reset taught me about the questions I ask on somebody else's deal. Recorded Oct. 2, 2026. Jack's investment figures, office economics and market observations are his account in this conversation. His comments about rates, cold-storage demand and development reflect his views as of the recording. In this episode Why Jack says the deals he regrets are the buildings he sold How partnership and cash flow shape his approach to ownership Vernon and Commerce, sale supply and slower price adjustment Why he sees power as central to data-center site decisions Bill Lee's broker-owned office model and recruiting economics Four runners, a learning curriculum and the next generation A prescription pad for books and the danger of getting comfortable Chapters 00:00:00 Youth Champions and mindset 00:03:27 LA industrial: Downtown, Vernon and Commerce 00:04:45 Data centers and power in Vernon 00:07:25 Vernon housing and local government 00:09:50 Cold storage in Vernon 00:13:15 A sales overhang and slower price correction 00:14:40 Where interest rates settle 00:15:39 LA City, Prologis and Measure ULA 00:17:55 Property rights 00:19:28 Opening Lee's Downtown LA office 00:22:27 Building young brokers 00:23:31 The next generation at Lee 00:26:03 Growing the pie and investing with clients 00:27:26 Bill Lee and the broker-owned model 00:29:51 Recruiting with AI and the office flywheel 00:31:36 Presidents meetings 00:32:52 Strategic Coach, EOS and personal growth 00:34:40 Owning buildings 00:39:51 Books he prescribes 00:43:31 Complacency and a bigger life Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oz13DErJIU Full transcript: https://smithcre.com/podcast/jack-cline/ Renew or relocate? Get the free Industrial Relocation Guide: https://smithcre.com/market-reports/industrial-insights-industrial-relocation-guide/ Guest: Jack Cline, President, Lee & Associates Downtown Los Angeles. Host: Justin Smith, SIOR.

    The Long View: Jack Cline on L.A. Industrial

  2. 3d ago

    Can You Get Power? Rob Gramlich on the Grid & Industrial Site Selection

    What happens when a manufacturer or data center finds a site but cannot get connected to the grid for five or six years? Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, joins Justin Smith to explain why electric demand caught utilities off guard, what is slowing new connections, and how power is becoming part of industrial site selection. We discuss rising utility bills, the culture clash between fast-moving tech firms and reliability-focused utilities, the race for AI power, regional differences from Northern Virginia to Texas and Ohio, and practical ways to get more out of the grid we already have. Rob also explains the three Ps of transmission (planning, permitting and paying) and why a willingness to pay for a project does not make the cost-sharing decision simple. Key Takeaways Utilities are telling some large new customers they cannot connect them for five or six years. Grid capacity, not land, now sets many start dates. The five-year U.S. load growth forecast rose from 2.6% to 4.7% in a single year (Grid Strategies, December 2023). Rising bills have many causes: new demand, expensive equipment, rebuilding after wildfires and storms, and replacing aging equipment. Big loads chase grid capacity, then move on once it is used up. Wind-cooled lines, smarter charging and batteries can all get more out of the existing grid. For power-intensive site searches, bring grid expertise onto the site selection team early. Recorded September 30, 2026. Later that day, the Senate released the bipartisan permitting bill Rob mentions, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026. Rob had not reviewed the bill text on air. Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7I6DC9lJzU Guest: Rob Gramlich, President, Grid Strategies Host: Justin Smith, SIOR, Lee & Associates Irvine

    Can You Get Power? Rob Gramlich on the Grid & Industrial Site Selection

  3. Sep 26

    Growing in Charlotte with Travis Wood of Lee & Associates

    Travis Wood spent six years at Prologis, working his way up from property management to leasing on a small team covering 15 to 16 million square feet in the Baltimore and DC market. Then he and his wife made the leap: a new city, a brand new Lee & Associates office in Charlotte, and straight commission. Two and a half years later, Lee Charlotte has grown to 17 people and Travis is part of the four-person JGPT team. We get into what the owner side teaches you about brokers, how the JGPT team formed (the name is a play on AI, but it's all human intelligence), and the day-to-day mechanics of building a pipeline: four hours a day of prospecting, why he skips the voicemail on the first call, the handwritten note that got a callback, picking a CRM as a team, and why every call should bring a piece of information. We finish with the Charlotte industrial market: growth, new supply, the flight to quality, tight flex and small bay product, owner-user pricing, and how to price industrial outdoor storage. Key Takeaways Every successful career has an inflection point where you take a risk. Travis left a salaried Prologis seat for commission in a city where he knew almost no one. Seeing every brokerage shop from the owner side teaches you what works. Borrow the best approach from each. Prospecting is not optional. The JGPT team blocks four hours a day for calls, texts and emails, because not every deal in the pipeline closes. Casual and direct beats scripted. And when an owner won't take your call, a teammate with a different style might get through. Skip the voicemail on the first call. Send a short, vague text instead. In the AI age, a real text proves you're a real person. Never make a truly cold call. Bring a piece of information and it becomes a lukewarm call. Luck is a numbers game. Put yourself in position more often and more deals hit. Charlotte is growing fast: roughly 135 new residents a day, heavy new supply, positive absorption, and a flight to quality as new 32-foot buildings compete with older 24-foot product. Small bay and flex are tight. Owner-user sales run around $200 a foot, and flex rents have reached about $17 for 5,000 to 10,000 square feet. IOS pencils because outdoor storage costs a fraction of storing the same equipment inside. The gap between the two is where the value is. Guest: Travis Wood, Senior Associate, Lee & Associates Charlotte Host: Justin Smith, SIOR, Lee & Associates Irvine Watch the video: https://youtu.be/TqA0Xk-Nx3M

    Growing in Charlotte with Travis Wood of Lee & Associates

  4. May 20

    Operations Consulting from Shop Floor to Boardroom with Gabriel Rodrigues of FALCONI

    Gabriel Rodrigues is a Partner at FALCONI, the largest management consulting firm in Brazil, now operating across North America. He moved from Brazil to Chicago in 2018 to build their U.S. practice from scratch and was recently named one of the Top 25 Supply Chain Consultants in the country. In this conversation, Gabriel breaks down what he sees when he walks into a manufacturing plant or warehouse, why most companies are not ready for the technology they are buying, and what industrial real estate operators need to understand about how their buildings affect tenant operations.   Key Takeaways Fix the process before you buy the tech. If your operations are chaotic, technology will only make that chaos more expensive. Automation is now a labor strategy, not a cost strategy. Companies are lowering ROI thresholds because the alternative is not having workers at all. Space optimization comes before network changes. Most companies have far more capacity in their existing facilities than they realize. The building is part of the talent strategy. Parking, security, lighting, and amenities directly affect whether workers show up. Landlords are sitting on a platform opportunity. Operational services like layout analysis, energy optimization, and data integration can be offered to tenants at scale. The real AI use cases in operations right now: predictive maintenance, machine vision, automated materials handling, and process control. Brazilian operational discipline, forged in a harder environment, is now being applied to American companies that never had to be that rigorous.   Chapters 02:15 - Growing up in Itajuba, Brazil and the path to engineering 06:30 - What is FALCONI and how it started 09:45 - Vicente Falconi, Toyota, and bringing TQC to Brazil 12:07 - "Changing the wheel while the car is running" 15:20 - How FALCONI embeds inside companies vs. traditional consulting 18:40 - The move to the United States and building the practice from zero 22:10 - What surprised him about American manufacturing 25:30 - PDCA methodology explained 28:45 - Change management on the shop floor 30:06 - "The definition of insanity" and noise propagation 33:31 - "Technology will only exacerbate your chaos" 35:22 - The ROI question most companies skip 38:46 - Automation for resilience, not savings 41:30 - How supply chain network design drives real estate decisions 44:46 - The parking lot story 47:15 - Space optimization before expansion 49:28 - Landlords as service providers 51:05 - Where to find Gabriel and FALCONI   Episode Resources Connect with Gabriel Rodrigues — Partner | Director Operations practices - FALCONI US https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-alves-rodrigues-731a762b/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/falconi-us/ Connect with Justin Smith, SIOR - Lee & Associates Irvine https://smithcre.com/  jbsmith@leeirvine.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbsmith/  949.400.4786

  5. May 13

    Orange County Industrial Real Estate Market Update Q1 2026 with Jay Tanjuan of Scannell Properties & Sean Ward of CBRE

    Three Southern California industrial veterans — Jay Tanjuan of Scannell Properties, Sean Ward of CBRE, and host Justin Smith of Lee & Associates — sit down to break down where the Orange County industrial market actually sits in Q1 2026. Each has spent more than two decades in SoCal industrial, riding every cycle from the early 2000s through the COVID boom and the current reset. The conversation lands on a few specific takeaways. Tenants didn't leave OC — they renegotiated. Advanced manufacturing (defense, aerospace, AI, energy, robotics) is rapidly becoming the dominant demand story. Three site attributes now drive every meaningful lease: proximity to labor, power, and parking. Land values are down 60 to 70 percent from the 2022 peak, which means the underwriting math actually works for the first time in two years. And only 2.7% of OC's existing industrial inventory is 36' clear or better — making the right kind of building genuinely scarce. Plus: the port-volumes-vs-vacancy disconnect, what landlords now demand to underwrite startup credit, where institutional capital is finally returning, Scannell's 10,000-amp project in Garden Grove, and bold predictions for humanoid robots in warehouses by 2027 — or sooner.   Key Takeaways Advanced manufacturing is now the dominant OC industrial demand story. Defense, aerospace, AI, energy, and robotics tenants are signing the biggest leases in the market. Velar Atomics — a small modular nuclear reactor company with fewer than 50 employees — just leased 500,000 SF. The Three Ps drive every advanced manufacturing site decision: Labor, Power, Parking. These tenants are paying north of $2 NNN to be in the right pocket of OC or LA — and they won't compromise on any of the three. Only 2.7% of Orange County industrial inventory is 36' clear or higher. Modern-spec product is genuinely scarce, and the buildings that fit what these tenants need are getting harder to find. Land values are down 60-70% from the 2022 peak. The underwriting math actually works for the first time in two years. New development sites are coming to market weekly as other groups exit projects. The five-year renewal wave is hitting now. Tenants who signed in 2020-2022 are deciding to grow, contract, or stay flat — and that decision will shape OC absorption over the next 18 months. Power is the new constraint. Scannell's Garden Grove project delivers with 10,000 amps of power — increasingly the only spec advanced manufacturing tenants will sign for. Jay Tanjuan's call: "Now's the time to take action." Lease rates have stabilized, basis is down, the right kind of building is scarce, and capital is finally starting to lean in.   Chapters 00:41 Jay Tanjuan & Sean Ward: 20+ years in SoCal industrial 03:44 The market today vs. 12-18 months ago 04:13 Liberation Day 2025 and the slowdown  06:00 Underwriting: a flurry of new development deals 08:25 Land values down 60-70% from the 2022 peak 09:00 The dominant story: Advanced Manufacturing 09:46 Velar Atomics: 50 employees, 500,000 SF 12:17 The Three Ps — Labor, Power, Parking 13:00 Record port volumes, rising vacancy: the disconnect 16:00 The 3PL spot market and excess capacity 17:21 Right-sizing the 2020-2022 build wave 18:28 The five-year renewal wave hitting now 20:00 Only 2.7% of OC industrial is 36' clear or higher 21:54 COVID-era: rents up 5% a month 23:39 "COVID gave landlords a PhD in raising rent" 25:33 Talent, AI, and why people still want to be in OC 26:30 The capital intensity of advanced manufacturing tenants 27:22 Tracking defense contractor announcements as a leading indicator 29:15 Scannell's Garden Grove project: 10,000 amps of power 29:54 Underwriting defense contractor credit 32:54 The EV tenant deal: a year of prepaid rent 33:47 LP capital cautiousness on development 35:33 "We bottomed out" — Jay's call on OC lease rates 36:45 "Site has to have a story" — Jay's underwriting framework 40:37 Rent disparity by tenant type: $2+ NNN vs. market 42:32 Power generation creativity: modular nuclear, on-site generation 44:00 AI, robots, and the next cycle 45:10 Hot take: When does a humanoid robot show up in a warehouse?  47:30 From dots on tour-book maps to self-driving cars   Episode Resources Connect with Jay Tanjuan, CCIM — Director of Development, Southern California, Scannell Properties https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytanjuan/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/scannell-properties/ https://scannellproperties.com/  Connect with Sean Ward — Executive Vice President, CBRE | SoCal Industrial https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-ward-ab616a8/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbre/ https://www.cbre.com/  Connect with Justin Smith, SIOR - Lee & Associates Irvine https://smithcre.com/  jbsmith@leeirvine.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbsmith/  949.400.4786

  6. May 11

    Bringing Data Mastery to Shipping with Hannah Testani of Intelligent Audit

    Justin Smith interviews Hannah Testani of Intelligent Audit to explore how data-driven strategies and AI are transforming transportation spend management, supply chain resilience, and logistics optimization amidst global disruptions. Hannah and Justin dig into why most companies are operating as firefighters instead of engineers, what they're getting wrong without knowing it, where the parcel carrier market is headed, and why AI is already doing for supply chain what credit card fraud detection did for banking.     Key Topics Data-driven transportation optimization Impact of global disruptions on logistics AI and automation in supply chain management   Chapters 02:42 - Understanding the Role of Intelligent Audit 05:22 - Common Challenges in Supply Chain Management 08:11 - The Impact of Freight Markets on Shipping 10:57 - Navigating Carrier Relationships and Costs 13:27 - Innovative Solutions for Supply Chain Efficiency 16:15 - The Complexity of Invoicing and Data Management 21:18 - Continuous Improvement in Data Management 23:55 - The Role of AI in Logistics 27:27 - AI as a Tool for Automation 29:57 - Embracing AI in the Workplace 31:59 - Navigating Inbound vs Outbound Cargo 39:16 - Future Trends in Logistics and Automation   Episode Resources Connect with Hannah Testani https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-testani-4bb77715/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-audit/ https://www.intelligentaudit.com/  Connect with Justin Smith https://smithcre.com/  jbsmith@leeirvine.com   https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbsmith/

  7. May 7

    Putting Data Center Deals Together with Jim Kerrigan, SIOR from North American Data Centers

    In this episode, Jim Kerrigan shares his expertise on the evolving data center industry, covering topics from supply and demand dynamics, site selection challenges, utility considerations, to future trends like AI and edge data centers.   Key Topics Data center importance and evolution Supply side challenges and moratoriums Site selection and utility considerations Impact of AI and edge computing Investment trends and market outlook   Chapters 02:42 - Supply Side Dynamics in Data Center Development 05:28 - Utility Considerations and Site Selection 08:18 - Emerging Trends: Inference and AI Data Centers 10:56 - Community Perception and Economic Impact of Data Centers 13:45 - Challenges in Data Center Development and Market Dynamics 16:23 - The Future of Data Centers and Speculative Development 21:34 - The Evolving Landscape of Farming 22:52 - Navigating Lease Contracts in Agriculture 23:25 - Understanding Data Center Lease Structures 26:27 - The Complexity of Data Center Market Dynamics 27:37 - The Role of Brokers in Data Center Transactions 29:21 - Factors Influencing Site Selection for Data Centers 31:02 - The Importance of Utility Considerations 32:02 - Power Usage Effectiveness and Its Impact 33:48 - The Demand for Data Center Capacity 34:44 - Capital Markets and Data Center Investments 37:09 - The Evolution of Data Center Valuation 38:26 - Investment Strategies in the Data Center Sector 40:09 - The Future of Data Centers and Public Perception   Episode Resources Connect with Jim Kerrigan linkedin.com/in/jimkerrigansior  https://www.linkedin.com/company/north-american-data-centers/  https://nadatacenters.com/  Connect with Justin Smith https://smithcre.com/  jbsmith@leeirvine.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbsmith/

  8. Apr 27

    The Future of On-Demand Warehousing with Karl Siebrecht of Flexe

    In this episode, Justin Smith chats with Karl Siebrecht about the transformative approach to industrial real estate through scalable, asset-light solutions and innovative tech. Discover how Flexe is redefining warehouse utilization, market cycles, and AI-driven insights in logistics.   Key Topics The origin story of Flexe and the problem of fixed warehouse capacity How underutilized capacity can be aggregated for flexible warehousing solutions Market cycles and the impact of COVID-19 on warehousing demand The technological platform driving transparency and efficiency in logistics AI's role in optimizing scope, pricing, and operational decision-making Differences between asset-light models and traditional leasing in logistics The future of spot markets in warehousing similar to freight   Chapters 05:12 - The Evolution of Flexe and Market Insights 10:47 - Navigating Early Challenges and First Customers 15:43 - Current State of the Business and Market Dynamics 21:55 - Industrial Vacancy Rates and Market Dynamics 24:08 - Understanding Pricing Stickiness in Warehousing 25:28 - Fixed vs. Flexible Warehousing Solutions 26:32 - The Freight Market and Its Impact on Warehousing 29:04 - The Rise of Co-Working Warehouses 30:52 - The Asset-Light Model in Warehousing 32:28 - Building Trust with Operators 35:39 - Leveraging Technology for Quality Assurance 38:52 - AI's Role in Enhancing Operational Efficiency   Episode Resources Connect with Karl Siebrecht https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-siebrecht-81188212/  https://www.linkedin.com/company/flexe/  https://flexe.com/  Connect with Justin Smith https://smithcre.com/  jbsmith@leeirvine.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbsmith/

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Ratings & Reviews

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out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Industrial Insights is a podcast that highlights the market dynamics, high level strategies, and in the trenches tactics for tenants and owners of industrial real estate. Each episode is designed to take hard fought wisdom from practitioners and break it down into insights that can drive better commercial real estate decision making. The host, Justin Smith, shares his experiences from 16 years in the business and brings in industry experts to discuss critical aspects of successful industrial projects.

Information

  • Creator
    Justin Smith
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2024
  • Show Website
    Industrial Insights

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