Capital decisions
We take candidate parcels down to net buildable acreage after wetlands, floodway, slope and easements, then compare transmission, fiber, water, zoning and earthwork. The first 3 are free.
Free preview: 3 properties, delivered 3 business days after we confirm your territory. No card, no call.
Sec. 01 — The decision
A 220-acre listing that nets 96 buildable acres is a different asset from the one in the brochure. The deciding constraint is often elsewhere — an 11-mile substation run, or a rezoning.
See how the research worksSec. 02 — Evidence
Site selection fails on the constraint nobody screened for, so each of these is measured from public data with the point named where a specialist takes over.
| Constraint | Where it comes from | What it settles — and what it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Net buildable acreage | Parcel polygons less wetlands inventory, FEMA floodway, LiDAR slope, and visible easements | Converts gross listed acreage into a defensible net developable figure and shows where the pad sits. It is a desktop netting, not a boundary survey or a jurisdictional determination. |
| Assemblage complexity | Parcel ownership records across the candidate footprint | Counts how many owners a site requires, identifies the holdout parcels controlling access, and flags fractional and heirs' ownership. It says nothing about willingness to sell or price. |
| Transmission proximity and voltage | Federal transmission line and substation datasets, voltage class where published, service territories | Measures distance from pad to substation and the voltage class of adjoining lines, the first-order screen for any large load. Capacity and queue position come only from the utility. |
| Fiber and latency position | Published long-haul route maps, carrier point-of-presence and exchange locations, path from the site | Brackets round-trip latency to the nearest exchange and shows whether physically diverse routes plausibly exist. It does not establish lit capacity, available conduit or pricing. |
| Water and sewer service | Utility and district service-area boundaries, permitted withdrawal points, treatment capacity, distance to mains | Indicates whether the site sits inside a service area and how far the nearest main is, which decides whether a water-intensive process is even a conversation. It is not a will-serve letter. |
| Zoning and entitlement path | Municipal and county zoning layers, comprehensive plan future land use, overlay districts | Establishes whether the intended use is by right, needs a special use permit, or needs a rezoning — a six-month schedule against a twenty-four-month one. It does not predict a council vote. |
| Access and logistics | Road functional classification and weight limits, interchange distance, Class I rail alignments | Shows truck routing, interchange distance and whether a rail spur exists or could plausibly be built. It does not secure a haul route permit or a rail service agreement. |
| Terrain and earthwork burden | LiDAR-derived slope, relief and cut-and-fill estimate across the intended pad footprint | Estimates the earthwork needed for a level pad at your target dimensions, often the largest cost gap between similar candidates. It is not a geotechnical report. |
| Environmental and community context | EPA facility and cleanup registries, historic aerial imagery, adjacent residential parcel counts | Flags prior industrial use, nearby regulated facilities and the residential adjacency that predicts organised opposition. It is not a Phase I assessment. |
Some counties publish attributed, machine-readable zoning and parcel layers; others publish a scanned map and a phone number. Each summary states which were available.
Sec. 03 — The engagement
Screening takes days and diligence takes months, so moving one disqualifying question earlier is the whole return.
One page per site with the same constraints in the same order, and the question most likely to end each candidate.
Gross parcel area, each deduction with its source, the net developable figure, and where the usable pad sits.
Substation distance and voltage class, fiber and exchange distance, water and sewer position, cut-and-fill across the pad, and road and rail access.
Current zoning, future land use, the approval route the intended use requires, and the parcel and owner count.
Sec. 04 — Limits
Everything below the line is a licensed or negotiated answer. A desktop screen that pretended otherwise would cost more than it saved.
Sec. 05 — Questions
No — it confirms position, not capacity: distance and voltage class, service-area membership, fiber route and exchange distance. Capacity, interconnection cost and will-serve commitments require direct conversations with the utility, the district and the carriers.
No, and it is not priced as if it did. It replaces the first three weeks of undifferentiated desktop work and arrives in a form the consultant, the engineer and the attorney can start from.
Yes, and that is where the framework earns most. The discipline is documenting where jurisdictions differ, because a comparison that hides that variance is worse than no comparison at all.
No — the same netting and constraint framework applies to manufacturing, distribution, cold storage, battery infrastructure and heavy industry. Only the thresholds change, and the facility profile drives those.
Further reading
The method behind this report, written out in full.
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Give us three candidate sites and your facility profile. We return net buildable acreage, utility position, zoning path and the disqualifying question for each, in 3 business days, free.
3 properties · 3 business days · no card
