By John Colglazier, SIOR, Partner & Managing Director, Partners Real Estate

Time to read: 6 minutes

For the last several years, the industrial market has been defined by extremes.

First came the acceleration during COVID. E-commerce exploded, supply chains reshuffled overnight, and industrial space became one of the most competitive asset classes in commercial real estate. Then came the wave of new development, followed by rising interest rates, economic uncertainty, and questions about whether the market had become overbuilt.

What I’m seeing today across Central Texas feels more balanced, at least from a traditional distribution perspective. There’s enough Class A inventory in the market to create options, and landlords and tenants are approaching deals more rationally than they were a few years ago.

At the same time, there are categories of industrial demand that remain significantly underserved. Manufacturing, light assembly, aerospace, defense, automotive, and technology users often require specialized infrastructure, heavier power loads, and faster timelines than much of the existing inventory was built to support.

That demand is reshaping what industrial growth looks like in Central Texas, and I think we’re entering the front end of the next major cycle.

The Austin–San Antonio Corridor Has Become a Strategic Industrial Ecosystem

A few years ago, a lot of industrial users treated Austin and San Antonio as extensions of Dallas or Houston. Today, the region has evolved into its own industrial market with its own momentum, infrastructure base, and growth dynamics.

Population growth across Central Texas has fundamentally changed the equation. At one point, Austin was adding more than 700 people per day. San Antonio was adding hundreds more. Even as those numbers have moderated, the broader region now represents a combined population of roughly six to seven million people.

That kind of scale changes how companies think about distribution, manufacturing, labor, and infrastructure.

At the center of it all is the I-35 corridor and SH-130.

From a logistics perspective, it’s hard to overstate how important that geography is. You have I-35 running north-south from the Mexican border into the Midwest and Canada. You have I-10 connecting east-west across the country. Central Texas sits at the crossroads of those systems.

SH-130 has become especially important because it allows freight and industrial traffic to move around Austin more efficiently instead of getting trapped in congestion along I-35. What was once simply a bypass road is now central to industrial growth across the region.

And the growth along that corridor is no longer theoretical.

Since joining Partners in 2021, I’ve been involved in roughly $650 million in transaction volume across Central Texas. During that same period, acreage developed along the IH-35/SH-130 corridor has approached 6,000 acres, with leased and sold transactions nearing 50 million square feet.

Tesla’s presence along SH-130 is obviously significant. Samsung’s expansion in Taylor is significant. But beyond the headline names, you’re seeing the supporting infrastructure around them begin to mature in real time. Communities that once sat outside the core growth story are now fully integrated into it.

Central Texas has become attractive for a lot of reasons at once. The infrastructure is improving, manufacturing activity is growing, logistics networks are expanding, and the population base continues to scale.

Industrial Real Estate Is No Longer Just About Location

Location still matters. It always will, but what differentiates successful industrial assets today has evolved dramatically.

The biggest change I’m seeing is speed and readiness.

Tenants are moving faster than they used to. Many companies delayed decisions over the last few years because of economic uncertainty, shifting supply chains, or broader macro concerns. Now, when opportunities materialize, timelines compress quickly.

That has changed what tenants expect from industrial product.

The days of delivering a cold dark shell and waiting for a tenant to figure out the rest are largely gone. Companies want operationally ready facilities with infrastructure already in place and sites that can move immediately.
And increasingly, they want power.

Power has become one of the defining issues in industrial real estate today, particularly for manufacturing, aerospace, technology, and advanced assembly users operating on shortened timelines. Modern industrial facilities rely on automation and advanced manufacturing systems that require far more electrical capacity than traditional warehouse product was designed to support.

A recent example is TaylorPort, a Partners-developed project outside Austin that recently secured a 366,115-square-foot full-building lease with global electronics manufacturer Compal Electronics. The building entered a market with little existing inventory in its size category and was designed with operational readiness in mind, including significant power capacity already in place. Heavy power availability — up to 25 megawatts — is almost unheard of in the speculative warehouse world. We were “one of one.” The transaction was later recognized by CoStar as Austin’s 2025 Lease of the Year.

That kind of preparation is changing how industrial projects get planned from the beginning. The market is rewarding infrastructure-ready sites, experienced operators, and teams that can move quickly through increasingly complex entitlement and utility challenges.

Frankly, the easy sites are mostly gone.

Why Secondary Markets Matter More Than Ever

One of the biggest misconceptions in industrial real estate is that opportunity only exists in primary markets.

Some of the most compelling industrial stories in Texas right now are unfolding in secondary markets that many investors previously overlooked.

Take Waco.

To me, Waco isn’t really a “new” industrial story. If you look closely, many of the signals have been there for decades. Large food service and distribution operators established major footprints there long ago because the geography worked. Those companies needed to efficiently serve multiple markets across Texas, and Waco made sense from a logistics standpoint.

Now, as Austin continues expanding northward and distribution patterns evolve, markets like Waco, Temple, and Belton are becoming increasingly attractive for a wider range of industrial users.

We’re actively advancing Waco Gateway, a 152-acre development along the I-35 corridor designed to support continued industrial and commercial growth in the region. That kind of activity reinforces my belief that the growth story in Central Texas extends well beyond the major metros themselves.
But secondary markets only work when the infrastructure fundamentals are real.

Corpus Christi is a good example. The region’s severe water shortages have become a major limitation for industrial growth and serve as a warning sign for other arid markets across Texas.

The markets succeeding today are the ones where those fundamentals are aligning.

Experience Matters More in Complex Markets

Industrial real estate has become significantly more operationally complex than it was a decade ago.
That complexity creates opportunities for experienced teams.

At Partners, a major part of our process involves harvesting and analyzing our own real-time market data. We track lease comps, active projects, tenant movement, supply gaps, and emerging demand patterns continuously across the region. Over time, those patterns begin to tell a story.
That’s how you identify what product is underserved, where demand is shifting, and where the next opportunities are likely to emerge.

Over the last couple of years, while the broader market felt slower from a leasing standpoint, we spent a tremendous amount of time positioning for the next cycle. We focused heavily on identifying and entitling large-scale industrial sites across Central Texas, knowing that eventually the market would shift again.

Now we’re beginning to see those efforts pay off.

We’re seeing growing demand for large industrial tracts, advanced manufacturing sites, and infrastructure-ready locations throughout the corridor. Many of the projects we’ve spent years preparing are now directly aligned with what the market is looking for today.

That’s one of the rewarding aspects of this business.

When you take a project from an idea, to raw land, to a fully functioning industrial development that creates jobs, attracts investment, and contributes to the broader economy, it feels tangible. You’re building something real.

And I think that’s why many of us enjoy this business as much as we do.

The industrial market will continue evolving. There will always be cycles, uncertainty, and new challenges to navigate. But from where I sit, Central Texas is still in the early innings of a much larger industrial transformation.

The next industrial frontier isn’t coming.

It’s already here.