经济学人下载:工业废弃地成为房地产巨头的新战场(2)

It is bard to imagine Stephen Schwamnan, Blackstone's highsociety boss, talking as passionately about the nitty-gritty of logistics as Mr Moghadam (who has a fraction of Mr Schwarzman's wealth). Yet a contest between the king of warehouses and the baron of private equity will be worth watching. It will not just shape the future of e-commerce. It will change the urban landscape, too.
很难想象黑石集团的高层老板斯蒂芬·施瓦姆南会和穆加达姆先生（他拥有的财富是施瓦姆南先生的一小部分）一样，在谈论起物流的本质时，十分激动。然而，仓库之王和私人股本巨头之间的竞争将值得关注。它不仅将塑造电子商务的未来。它也将改变城市景观。

To see why, cycle, as Schumpeter did last weekend, up London's Lea Valley, an idyll of canal boats and riverside vegetable gardens running from the graffiti-covered East End to the capital's north. Stop at the Ravenside Retail Park, a place of shuttered stores like Mothercare, a well-known British brand, and Maplin, an electronics retailer. It is destined to become ground zero for the retail apocalypse. In January Prologis spent ￡51n ($68m) acquiring the site, just before covid-19 accelerated the agony of its remaining tenants. In a few years, once they, or their leases, expire, Prologis hopes to turn the area into a multistorey warehouse for e-commerce firms like Amazon. That is part of a global pattern. In America such logistics hubs are rising from the rubble of dead shopping malls.
为了弄清原因，像熊彼特上周末那样，骑自行车沿着伦敦利阿谷向上行驶，从涂鸦覆盖的东端到首都北部，是一片运河船只和河畔蔬菜园的田园风光。在Ravenside零售园停下来，这里有很多关闭的店铺比如英国知名品牌Mothercare以及电子商品零售商Maplin。它注定会成为零售业末日的起点。今年一月，就在新冠疫情加剧了剩余的租赁店铺的痛苦之前，Prologis斥资5100万英镑（合6800万美元）收购了这个地方。几年后，一旦他们或他们的租约到期，Prologis希望把这个地区变成像亚马逊这样的电子商务公司的多层仓库。这是全球格局的一部分。在美国，这样的物流中心正从废弃的购物中心废墟中崛起。

It is easy to dismiss the warehouse business. As one industry boss puts it, investors used to think of it as "four walls and a roof that you hope doesn't leak"-in other words, highly commoditised. Yet Mr Moghadam says it is enthralling. The first task, he says, is to decide on which end of the supply chain to be. He settled on mass consumer markets around the world rather than serving producers, because, as he puts it, "Consumers do not move, factories do." As a result, his warehouses sit close to huge urban areas where land is scarce. It also requires patience. In America it has taken decades for e-commerce to eke out a double-digit share of retail spending. Lockdowns have turbocharged the shift. Before the pandemic about a fifth of Prologis's warehouse construction was for e-commerce, and the rest for other forms of logistics. The e-commerce share is now as high as 40%, Mr Moghadam says.
人们很容易会不考虑开展仓库业务。正如一位行业老总所言，投资者过去认为这是“四堵墙和一个你希望不会漏水的屋顶”——换句话说，高度商品化。然而，穆加达姆表示，仓库令人着迷。他说，第一项任务是去决定为供应链的哪一端服务。他在全球范围内建立了大众消费市场，而不是为生产商服务，因为正如他所说，“消费者不会移动，工厂会”因此，他的仓库就坐落在土地稀缺的大城市附近。这也需要耐心。在美国，电子商务花了几十年时间才在零售支出中占据两位数的份额。 封锁措施这种转换加速。在疫情之前，Prologis将自己大约五分之一的仓库建设用于电子商务，其余用于其他形式的物流。穆加达姆表示，目前电子商务的份额高达40%。