Industrial Land Supply and Demand in the Central Puget Sound Region

The nature of industrial development has changed significantly during the past 150 years. The evolution has included multi-story lofts on compact urban sites, one-story manufacturing plants extended over large sites, and suburban business parks with a mix of light manufacturing and office uses.

This issue of Puget Sound Trends provides information from a recently completed study of long-term industrial land supply and demand by the Regional Council and the Center for Community Development and Real Estate at the University of Washington (UW Real Estate Center).

For all industrial land, information was collected on number of acres designated and net supply. For major industrial areas, additional data were collected regarding parcel sizes and prices, infrastructure adequacy, development activity and other characteristics. The data were collected between March 1996 and August 1997.

The study defined "industrial land" as urban land designated in comprehensive plans for manufacturing, heavy and light industry, research and development, wholesale trade, warehousing and distribution, and business parks. The region has 64,000 acres of industrial land, approximately 10 percent of the total urban growth area. This total includes developed and undeveloped areas, critical areas, street and utility right-of-ways, and other public purpose lands designated industrial.

Net industrial land supply is the amount of land potentially available for future development. Net supply was calculated by eliminating already developed areas, designated critical areas, such as wetlands or steep slopes, certain public-purpose lands, and future road right-of-way needs. This analysis did not determine whether land was for sale or lease. Estimated net industrial land supply for the region is 21,500 acres. Approximately 84 percent of net supply is from vacant land and 16 percent is from potentially redevelopable land.

Two-thirds of the region's net industrial land supply is located in Pierce (36 percent) and Snohomish (28 percent) counties. King County includes 21 percent of the region's net supply and Kitsap County includes 15 percent. Figure 1 shows acres of designated and net industrial land by county.

Projected employment growth was converted to industrial land needs using building square feet per employee ratios from a 1997 survey conducted by the UW Real Estate Center of industrial land users and managers. The survey results indicate that building space needs per employee range from 577 to 1,121 square feet across four traditional industrial sectors.

Projected demand for industrial land through the year 2020 is between 5,600 and 7,100 acres. The demand model was applied twice to estimate industrial land needs under two future land use patterns: 1) industrial lands are used only for industrial employment and 2) industrial lands are used to accommodate a mix of employment categories similar to current patterns.

The first application of the model used 100 percent of the forecasted employment growth to 2020 in four industrial sectors: construction, manufacturing, transportation/communication/utilities, and wholesale trade. Under this application, estimated demand through the year 2020 is an additional 7,117 acres of industrial land (Table 1).