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"We believe strongly in the nexus between port activity and demand for logistics properties in and around those key nodes. We want to be part of that growth."
- Ronel Borner, East Region SVP of Development, on investing in port markets like Savannah, GA
CenterPoint’s East Region SVP of Development, Ronel Borner, was interviewed by the Journal of Commerce at the TPM 2026 conference.
Successful industrial real estate investors recognize that real opportunity comes from having a presence where growth is happening — aligning with expanding ports, growing alongside them, and delivering exactly what their clients need to thrive. Read the transcript below or see the video in which Ronel Borner and Ariane Herrera, Sr. Associate Editor, Special Projects, Journal of Commerce by S&P Global, discuss building a portfolio around optionality, the increased demand for quality structures, and the value of talking to customers to understand the specifications that will help them succeed.
Ronel: We’re seeing a lot of our customers, a lot of our clients, really invest more and more into warehouse infrastructure, making their existing space just more and more efficient. For us at CenterPoint, what we’re trying to do is work with a lot of our clients, make it easier for them to make those investments, potentially working with them on lease structure. Whether it’s allowing them to make changes to the existing building or lease term, allowing them more time to realize a return on those investments. We’re really trying to make sure that our buildings, whether they’re port-proximate or further afield—and usually the ones further afield are the larger ones, those are really the bigger investments our clients are trying to make—really trying to work with them as best as we can to allow them to make those investments, and hopefully a happy customer stays in our buildings a little longer.
What we’ve really been trying to do at CenterPoint is build our portfolio around optionality. What does that mean? Really offering our tenants different types of solutions depending on how they try to use their logistics infrastructure. We offer buildings with rail, we have some transload buildings, and high-velocity buildings. Just again, building our overall portfolio in various regional locations in a way that really gives our clients the most optionality for how they want to operate.
We are continuing to see a flight to quality. All of our clients want better buildings with the best specifications, whether that’s clear height, trailer parking, car parking, or just overall dimensions that allow their racking to work the most efficiently. What we’re really trying to do is make sure that we’re talking to our clients, know what they want, and ultimately build a building, or for that matter, own buildings that meet the specifications that today’s logistics tenants are looking for.
We believe strongly in the nexus between port activity and demand for logistics properties in and around those key nodes. If you look at a place like Savannah, they’re investing heavily in infrastructure, overall expansion, and overall throughput over the next three, four, five years. We, as an investor in industrial real estate, want to be there. We want to be part of that growth. We want to essentially grow with the port and give their clients what they need when they bring those containers into the Port of Savannah.
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