“If you build it, he will come.” Yes, you’ve heard the Field of Dreams reference before, but never has it rang truer than with the Kansas City industrial market. The construction of 500,000-square-foot buildings suddenly ignited tenants’ interest in that space size, so much so that in the past two years Kansas City has experienced a tremendous surge in growth. In fact, Kansas City is now ranked No. 6 on the list of the top 10 U.S. industrial markets for speculative construction deliveries, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Coming off a record 5.5 million square feet of positive net absorption in 2016, the market exceeded that number by 65.7 percent in 2017 with a staggering year-end total of 9.2 million square feet of absorption. Putting that kind of tenant demand into perspective is challenging. The consensus is that while Kansas City has enjoyed a boom period for the past few years, 2018 will prove to be the best year yet. For the past six years, the vacancy rate held steady, never going above 8.3 percent and never dropping below 7.1 percent. To better understand just how fast this market is growing, let’s examine some of the largest industrial markets in …
