This toolkit is a how-to-guide. Its purpose is to give city staff, policy makers, and partner organizations concrete tools and strategies to preserve industrial space, grow, and modernize building stock, and maintain a ordability in their city’s industrial real estate, thereby creating a fertile ground for local manufacturing companies to thrive, expand, and re-locate within a community. For each strategy, there are several case studies outlined and some considerations to keep in mind when evaluating whether such a strategy is the right choice for a particular community.

There are many policies that support a successful manufacturing sector but at the most basic level: manufacturers need a place to make. It is imperative that individual cities take action in their own community to protect, grow, and ensure the usefulness of their industrial real estate. Once industrial space is lost to other uses, it is virtually impossible to convert back. Implementing clear real estate strategies at the city level will help manufacturing businesses start, grow, and stay in cities.