Avison Young tracks $3.4T U.S. manufacturing pipeline with two dozen projects under construction

Avison Young is tracking 124 proposed or announced manufacturing projects in the U.S. worth $3.4 trillion in potential investment. Roughly two dozen facilities are under construction, carrying about $500 billion in committed capital, the brokerage's data show.

The groundbreakings follow incentive programs that span two presidencies, Bisnow reported. Some projects now under way are drawing on benefits from former President Joe Biden's CHIPS and Science Act, while President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act added tax breaks aimed at factory development, including manufacturers beyond chip fabrication. Biden's Inflation Reduction Act has largely been sidelined by the administration that inherited it.

Peter Kroner, who leads industrial research at Avison Young, expects the pace of groundbreakings to pick up through the end of the year. "We fully anticipate another hockey stick that's going to dwarf this starting to happen at the end of the year," he told Bisnow. He added that the industry has "peaked in terms of that trough of uncertainty for 18 months," with manufacturers eager to use what is in the bill.

Tech dominates the largest projects drawing on the tax incentives, with pharmaceutical and automotive production rounding out the top projects that have broken ground, Bisnow reported. Aerospace is expanding from a smaller base, tied to drone development and space work that the government increasingly contracts to companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Most of what is breaking ground is not the type of operation that puts hundreds of blue-collar workers on a production floor. The projects lean on advanced robotics to hold precise production lines, said Craig Van Pelt, who leads research at Cresa. He called the CHIPS Act "one of the biggest financial packages we've ever done in the United States," but added there is a long way from permitting and site preparation to active construction and production.

For private real estate capital, the pipeline is a demand signal for industrial land, shell construction, power and the logistics built around plants. It also puts manufacturers in the same bidding pool as data center developers. As this publication has reported, the hyperscaler bid is the number to beat on labor, materials and debt for nondata projects, which leaves last year's pro formas on the wrong side of the cost curve.