Video Recap of Bisnow's SoCal Industrial Summit

Prologis president-Southwest Kim Snyder says large-floorplate buildings still outperform mid-sized and smaller buildings in absorption. The search for land has developers buying sites with buildings and bones—semi-functional leased buildings—and banking them until they can demo to put up a Class-A building.

Trammell Crow senior managing director Tom Bak is bullish on buildings over 500k SF; he recently signed a 1.25M SF logistics lease with Amazon.com. For 1M SF users, rent's an insignificant factor; many look for the best way to provide same-day delivery. Brownfield and infill development are also part of TCC's focus.

It's all about large format buildings in the Inland Empire, where partner Mark Payne says Panattoni Development recently herded kittens—assembling 20 different land owners for a project. Noting the smaller products market seems to be coming back, Mark says that in infill markets like LA he'll buy sites as small as 2.5 acres.

Cassidy Turley VP Brad Koehler says some areas have no buildings larger than 100k SF available, where the same area will have five or six 50k SF buildings and no takers. The $0.10/SF premium for larger building is almost across the board, and in the Inland Empire, the top-down dynamic is moving into buildings below 100k SF.