Infrastructure at Scale: The New CRE Frontier
How data centers and solar energy are redefining industrial land value
Two infrastructure buildouts - one in Indiana and one across Florida are signaling a fundamental shift in how CRE leaders should think about industrial and land assets. Both involve massive scale, utility-level power demands, and economic development implications that go far beyond traditional property categories.
Amazon's 1,200-Acre AI Campus: Compute as Real Estate
Amazon Web Services deployed a massive AI data center in New Carlisle, Indiana. 1,200 acres that will eventually span roughly 30 buildings and consume about 2.2 gigawatts of power. That's enough energy to power 1.5 million homes.
What makes this notable isn't just the scale, it's the execution. The project moved from dirt to operational in just over a year, powered not by Nvidia GPUs but by 500,000+ AWS Trainium2 chips custom-built for AI workloads in partnership with Anthropic.
Why CRE leaders should pay attention:
This is hyper-scale infrastructure as a real estate play. Multi-building campuses with enormous power footprints represent the next generation of institutional infrastructure. Land use planning must now account for facilities that consume power at levels previously reserved for cities.
Compute clusters are becoming the new long-duration industrial asset class. If you thought industrial real estate was just warehouses, this reframes the category entirely. Data centers now compete with logistics and manufacturing for premium land assets and they often win on lease duration and tenant creditworthiness.
Power becomes a strategic asset:
A 2.2-gigawatt demand profile means this facility competes with cities for electricity and water, permanently. Utility negotiations, long-term power contracts, pricing, and redundancy become strategic bargaining chips. Grid partnerships for new data centers often outstrip traditional industrial users. Stakeholders will increasingly ask what these projects mean for community impact and sustainability.
CRE leaders aren't just landlords in this environment, we're partners in regional infrastructure planning. Land holdings with utility access and entitlement potential are suddenly premium assets in a category that didn't exist at this scale a decade ago.
Florida's Solar Surge: Energy as Land Use
Florida quietly vaulted into the front ranks of U.S. solar energy capacity, outpacing even California in new utility-scale solar installations in 2024. The state added over 3 gigawatts of new capacity - enough to power roughly 600,000 homes.
This surge is the result of falling panel and battery costs, energy security concerns amplified by extreme weather events, and policy incentives making solar accessible to commercial players and homeowners alike. Florida went from passive solar potential to active solar leader in just a few years.
The CRE intersection:
Large-scale solar farms require hundreds or thousands of acres, prime land that competes with traditional industrial, logistics, or mixed-use development. CRE owners and planners need to understand how solar demand influences land valuation, zoning pressures, and long-term entitlement strategies.
Today's tenants, especially industrial, data center, and manufacturing users care about predictable, low-cost energy supply. Proximity to utility-scale solar or on-site generation can be a differentiator in leasing conversations and directly affects operating expenses. States that harness low-cost renewable energy attract new business investment, supporting job creation and enhancing appeal to energy-intensive businesses. That drives demand for commercial land and development capital.
Strategic levers for leaders:
CRE portfolios with underutilized land parcels may find solar developers as buyers or long-term lease prospects sometimes at valuations that outperform traditional uses. For industrial parks, campuses, and logistics hubs, incorporating on-site solar plus storage can reduce operating costs, simplify sustainability reporting, and attract tenants seeking green energy credentials.
Where grid capacity or interconnection is limited, early coordination with utility and policy stakeholders can unlock or accelerate project approvals, converting potential challenges into competitive advantages.
The Convergence: Power-Intensive Infrastructure
Here's where these two stories intersect: both Amazon's data center buildout and Florida's solar expansion are about power at scale.
Data centers need enormous, reliable electricity supplies. Solar farms generate it. The regions that can deliver both land, power infrastructure, policy support, and speed to market will become magnets for the next wave of industrial and technology investment.
This creates a new strategic calculus for CRE portfolios:
Land with utility access is now premium. Parcels near substations, transmission lines, or renewable generation sources have fundamentally different valuations than they did five years ago.
Energy strategy is asset strategy. Properties that integrate distributed generation, battery storage, or power purchase agreements can reduce tenant operating expenses and improve competitive positioning.
Municipalities matter more than ever. Jurisdictions that streamline permitting, support grid infrastructure investment, and align economic development with energy planning will capture disproportionate value.
Looking Ahead: The Infrastructure Layer
What we're witnessing isn't a niche shift, it's the emergence of a new infrastructure layer in commercial real estate. Compute-intensive facilities and renewable energy generation are no longer side notes in industrial portfolios. They're driving land acquisition, shaping tenant requirements, and redefining what makes a property strategically valuable.
For portfolios with industrial or land holdings, data center demand and solar development represent structural growth areas. For operators evaluating new investments, understanding power availability, utility partnerships, and regional energy policy is now as critical as understanding zoning or transportation access.
Bottom line: Amazon's Indiana campus and Florida's solar boom aren't isolated headlines, they're proof points of a broader transformation. Infrastructure real estate is evolving from passive holdings to active platforms for economic growth. CRE leaders who understand power, utilities, and scale as core strategic assets - not afterthoughts, will be the ones capturing value.
