How Wall Street’s Big Bets on A.I. Are Driving Interest in Huge Parking Lots
Wall Street’s biggest firms are pouring into industrial outdoor storage — the unglamorous lots that have become essential to logistics, trade and the data-center boom.
IOS lots — a few acres of gravel or asphalt near highways and ports — were long the province of small investors. Now the building boom for AI data centers, which need nearby space to stage millions of dollars of generators, tractors and trailers, has turned them into prime targets for institutional capital.
All of that generates direct and indirect demand for IOS.Leo Addimando, Managing Partner, Alterra (via The New York Times)
Blackstone committed $189 million to a fund with Alterra to buy 49 IOS sites across 22 states, while J.P. Morgan and others have launched their own ventures. Since 2020, IOS rents have jumped 123 percent — a return profile that helps explain why pension funds, banks and asset managers are moving in.
Source: The New York Times, “How Wall Street’s Big Bets on A.I. Are Driving Interest in Huge Parking Lots,” by Patrick Sisson, September 16, 2025.
