Creative Reinvention: Turning Obsolete Assets Into Modern Logistics

Marie Ruff for Market Share Blog | May 22, 2026

“Today we’re going to talk about land-constrained East Coast markets and the fact that creativity is becoming a major competitive advantage,” began Mark Levy, chief investment officer, FRP Holdings, Inc., the moderator of a panel this week at I.CON East in Jersey City, New Jersey. “If you don’t have the ability to bring creative solutions to identifying sites and future development opportunities, you’re certainly going to find that you are left behind.”

The panel included Michael Bennett, managing director and head of development, Kadima Industrial Partners; Dale Koch, PE, principal, Bohler; and Scot Murdoch, AIA, partner, KSS Architects.

When we talk about creative reinvention in today’s industrial market, what’s really driving the trend?

“At least in our recent time here, doing a lot of work in the [New York City] boroughs, it really comes down to location, location, location – then fundamentals,” Murdoch said. “If the environment is solid and there’s a huge population center, then you look at whether an asset has good skin, good bones, good strength and can, with minor intervention, be actually repurposed.”

“I would [say] land scarcity and maybe one step further to zoning scarcity,” Bennett said. “A lot of what we work with is diminishing industrial-zoned land.”

Koch agreed that location and land scarcity are key drivers. His company has found opportunities in New York, with “a lot of aging assets where the structures and the buildings have really good bones, and they’re in a great location.”

“Your opportunity there is to go in and find something that could be reused and push yourself through the entitlement process without sitting for years trying to get something approved through the local municipality,” Koch said.

Which projects are ripe for redevelopment? Which are more trouble than they’re worth?

“Define ‘more trouble than they’re worth,’” said Bennett, noting that it depends on how much time and effort someone is willing to spend. He said some potential redevelopment projects are the usual suspects, like old manufacturing facilities and suburban offices. He also mentioned older retail strip malls or super centers, along with old airport sites that no longer support that business.

“The entitlement environment doesn’t have a linear path oftentimes,” Bennett said. He shared a story of trying to entitle a project in the same town as a competitor’s project; both were obsolete office properties. Bennett’s project was approved, while the competitor’s was rejected. “The difference was less than half a mile, so it’s hard to predict.”

“Things that were built years ago still need new driveway access, new utilities, new infrastructure, changes to the building,” Koch said. When evaluating a project, running numbers and trying to see how viable it is, developers should stop and think, “Yeah, you could save a few dollars to reinvest and repurpose something, but does it make sense for [the] end user?”