The Benefits of Unconventional Proximity: ProximityParks

Q: How does ProximityParks align its urban logistics strategy with the objectives of Plan México?

A: The formalization of the Plan México framework represents vital momentum for ProximityParks. To date, over 20 industrial parks have been recognized across the country as part of this national economic strategy. Of those, ProximityParks has delivered two operational assets, with an additional six ProximityParks properties in the pipeline for delivery under the program. This participation underscores a long-term commitment to developing infrastructure that drives economic growth across Mexico's major cities, generating stable employment and attracting institutional capital.

A primary differentiator for ProximityParks within the industrial real estate sector is the geographic and economic focus of the portfolio. While the vast majority of traditional industrial developers construct large-scale manufacturing facilities and logistics hubs on the outer peripheries of metropolitan areas, primarily to capture export-driven demand generated by nearshoring, ProximityParks invests strictly inside major urban centers. This strategy targets domestic consumption rather than exports. Every consumer good utilized within a major city, including e-commerce orders, food and beverage distribution, household appliances, and apparel, requires localized storage before final delivery. Managing a portfolio approaching US$700 million in assets under management, the firm operates the largest dedicated last-mile logistics industrial parks in Mexico, located in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara.

Operationally, this model focuses on urban regeneration. The company acquires underutilized, obsolete, or abandoned urban properties that have been absorbed by expanding city limits and transforms them into modern, sustainable distribution nodes. These redevelopments are engineered with clean energy infrastructure, utilizing extensive solar panel arrays and integrated green spaces. Furthermore, these localized facilities create accessible, high-paying jobs directly where populations already reside, with a significant percentage of the workforce comprising women from the surrounding communities. This approach provides clear regulatory and economic certainty for international asset managers, leading Mexican Pension Funds (AFOREs), and private investors across four continents, establishing a benchmark for sustainable urban real estate investment.

Q: Your urban revitalization model is unconventional. When you pitch this to institutional investors, what are their main hesitations, and how do you overcome them?

A: Urban revitalization represents a core pillar of the investment thesis. The operational experience with both domestic and international institutional investors has been exceptionally positive. There is an expansive appetite to deploy capital within Mexico, driven fundamentally by substantial liquidity held within the asset sheets of AFOREs, which face strategic, fiduciary, and regulatory mandates to allocate capital into productive domestic infrastructure. While this influx of capital may not be distributed evenly across all sectors of the economy, it remains highly concentrated in urban logistics because the financial viability, predictable returns, and structural benefits of these assets have been repeatedly demonstrated.

ProximityParks operates under a framework designated as a Triple-Net-Positive investment standard. This means that all capital must simultaneously achieve three non-negotiable benchmarks: it must be positive for commercial clients and urban consumers by optimizing supply chains; positive for the host city and the environment through sustainable redevelopments; and positive for institutional investors by delivering strong, risk-adjusted yields.

When a real estate venture presents a structurally sound business plan backed by the rule of law and judicial certainty, institutional capital acts efficiently and enters the market. Investor hesitation typically arises only in fragmented industries where the regulatory framework is ambiguous or obstructed by bureaucratic bottlenecks. As regulatory clarity continues to improve across the sector, market appetite remains robust, proving that clear operational guidelines and legal certainty consistently attract top-tier global and domestic financing.

Q: Having industrial activity might sound concerning for some people because of environmental impact. How does ProximityParks manage its operations to keep environmental impact under control?

A: Sustainability has been hardcoded into ProximityParks’ DNA since day one. The core business thesis is inherently sustainable. By positioning e-commerce giants, package delivery firms, and food and beverage distributors directly within the heart of major metropolitan areas, the distance required for final-mile deliveries is dramatically compressed. Whether delivering to residential homes, local convenience stores, or neighborhood businesses, vehicles travel significantly fewer kilometers. This reduction in vehicle miles traveled allows commercial tenants to deliver inventory faster, cheaper, and with a significantly lower carbon footprint.

To build on this structural advantage, the asset architecture must be as innovative as the location strategy. Because these urban logistics nodes operate as high-velocity hubs, packages enter and exit via commercial vehicles constantly throughout the day, making localized emissions a critical concern. Anticipating the inevitable transition toward electrification over the next decade, ProximityParks has proactively future-proofed its infrastructure. Every asset built or retrofitted since the company's inception is engineered with high-capacity electrical grids, extensive solar panel arrays, and the foundational framework needed to support high-density fleet charging. Today, a typical ProximityParks facility is designed and built ready to support up to 100 industrial EV chargers, with the electrical capacity and physical infrastructure already in place for high-density fleet charging. This infrastructure positions every ProximityParks facility to support an accelerating share of zero-emission deliveries as urban fleets continue to electrify.

This rigorous design philosophy covers every dimension of resource management. In water-stressed metropolitan areas like Mexico City, properties are engineered with advanced low-consumption systems, including waterless urinals, alongside low-maintenance, eco-efficient construction materials. To validate these operational standards, the entire portfolio is either certified or actively undergoing LEED certification. While this level of ESG integration remains uncommon within the traditional industrial real estate sector, it has proven to be a powerful commercial driver. Tier 1 global enterprises navigate strict, non-negotiable corporate sustainability mandates, and leasing an asset from ProximityParks allows them to achieve their environmental and operational benchmarks.

Q: How has ProximityParks’ experience been with LEED certification, and which strategies have helped the company streamline the certification process?

A: While achieving individual green certifications is standard practice for many companies, the true operational differentiator occurred when the volume of submissions scaled significantly. To streamline this process, the company adopted the specialized LEED Volume program, positioning ProximityParks among the early adopters of this framework within Mexico's logistics real estate sector.

Rather than certifying each warehouse through isolated, repetitive processes, the LEED Volume program allows an organization to certify an entire portfolio simultaneously by standardizing sustainable design and construction blueprints. When the US Green Building Council (USGBC) recognized the sheer velocity and volume of high-standard submissions coming from Mexico, the company's regional execution shifted into a global benchmark. This resulted in direct invitations from the USGBC headquarters in Washington, DC, to act as the sole Latin American representative at international vanguard forums alongside only four other leading global enterprises from India, Europe, the United States, and Africa.

This transition to the LEED Volume protocol has fundamentally optimized development pipelines. We established a direct, institutional relationship with the global certifying body and pre-approved our core engineering standards. This removes the traditional bureaucratic friction of green certification and ensures that every retrofitted urban asset moves from acquisition to certified operational status at an accelerated pace.

Q: Multi-story warehouses are becoming a prominent solution for urban logistics globally. What is ProximityParks' perspective on vertical industrial development, and is it a viable strategy for the Mexican market?

A: The fundamental issue within major metropolitan areas like Mexico City, Monterrey, or Guadalajara is not an absolute scarcity of space, but rather how efficiently that space is planned and utilized. While multi-story, vertical industrial parks have been standard practice for decades in hyper-dense Asian hubs like Hong Kong, that specific engineering model does not translate effectively to the Mexican market due to big structural differences in logistics infrastructure.

The vertical model in Asia relies on smaller, cab-over trucks and 40ft containers with a tight turning radius. This allows facilities to build helical ramps where vehicles easily drive up to higher floors. In Mexico, the logistics industry standard is the American-style 53ft trailer pulled by conventional, long-nosed trucks. These vehicles are significantly heavier and require double the turning radius. Building a ramp system inside a city to accommodate them would require a massive land footprint that simply does not exist. Furthermore, attempting to replace ramps with heavy-duty freight elevators creates severe operational bottlenecks. Sharing a limited number of elevators and ground-floor docks across multiple tenants destroys efficiency. For high-volume e-commerce and delivery clients who move tens of thousands of packages a day, that friction is a dealbreaker.

Because verticality does not work for large-scale last-mile logistics in Mexico, the focus must shift to advanced horizontal optimization on a single level. Since 2017, we have been using proprietary data tools and artificial intelligence to analyze variables such as land use, traffic patterns, and exact zoning regulations. This technical approach allows the company to identify and secure highly strategic, single-level properties right in the middle of core urban neighborhoods, such as Viaducto, Colonia del Valle, and Santa Fe in Mexico City, San Pedro Garza Garcia in Monterrey, or the heart of Guadalajara. When a logistics asset is backed by precise data and designed correctly, multi-story construction is entirely unnecessary.

Q: While multiple variables dictate successful space optimization in urban real estate, if you had to prioritize one defining factor above all others, what would it be?

A: The definitive factor is location, or more accurately, proximity. In real estate, the old adage of location, location, location remains an absolute truth across offices, retail, and industrial spaces alike. A premium location can frequently compensate for operational inefficiencies elsewhere.

However, within dense urban logistics, securing the right location requires solving a highly complex matrix of variables. Prohibitive constraints such as zoning regulations, accessibility, available footprint, and electrical grid capacity dictate feasibility. For instance, a tenant might desire a distribution hub in a hyper-central neighborhood, but if the physical space does not exist, or if the zoning laws forbid industrial activity, that option is immediately eliminated. Furthermore, operations must factor in logistical risks, such as avoiding areas prone to frequent civil disruptions like protests, which can paralyze a supply chain, or strategically assessing the surrounding neighborhood to ensure operations do not conflict with local residents.

Optimizing these factors is fundamentally about selling proximity, the core concept from which the brand ProximityParks is derived. Proximity is a powerful economic and human anchor. It is about proximity to the end consumer, proximity to a reliable labor pool, proximity to suppliers, and proximity to major corporate centers. When a company bridges these gaps by anchoring itself in the correct physical location, it transforms logistics from a structural challenge into a distinct competitive advantage.

Q: What are ProximityParks’ growth and investment projections for the coming years, and how do these expansion plans align with your broader portfolio strategy?

A: The current portfolio is approaching US$700 million in assets under management, with a target to scale the platform to US$1 billion over the next three years. Meeting this objective requires deploying approximately US$100 million in capital annually, which translates to adding four to six new urban locations to the network each year.

ProximityParks currently operates 17 active locations nationwide. The pipeline for the remainder of this year is highly active; one acquisition is on the verge of closing, with an additional three to four investments scheduled to finalize before year-end. This growth trajectory is executed in lockstep with the expansion demands of core commercial tenants, ensuring that new capacity is immediately absorbed by market demand.

We continue to raise and deploy capital efficiently into critical metropolitan infrastructure because we have strong institutional investor confidence. This expansion does more than just scale our balance sheet. It actively expands the footprint of our Triple-Net-Positive framework, proving that capital deployment can simultaneously drive corporate yield, tenant efficiency, and sustainable urban development.

Q: What is the most valuable piece of advice you would offer to entrepreneurs trying to build a disruptive business model?

A: The most fundamental factor in building a scalable, differentiated business is absolute specialization. I started my career over two decades ago, developing a mix of offices, retail spaces, residential subdivisions, and traditional warehouses. However, I quickly realized that it is impossible to become the absolute leader in your space if you are stretched across completely different industries. You cannot build a truly extraordinary brand or deeply understand your clients if you try to do a little bit of everything. When we founded ProximityParks, we committed entirely to one niche and eliminated all outside distractions.

Specialization allows you to obsess over a specific problem, but you must remain flexible about the solution. This is actually a story that dates back to when we first launched ProximityParks. We thought we were going to solve the last-mile logistics problem through verticality. In fact, if you look closely at our corporate logo, it is an icon of a three-story warehouse.

We clearly understood the problem that e-commerce companies were facing, but our initial assumption about how to solve it was wrong. We quickly realized that vertical warehouses did not make operational sense in Mexico, so we pivoted to horizontal urban optimization. This shift did not change our core thesis. Our goal was never to build multi-story buildings; our goal was to bring logistics closer to the heart of the city. 

As an entrepreneur, you have to fall in love with the problem, not your specific solution. Specialization gives you the focus to dream about that problem every day, test different iterations, learn from your errors, and constantly perfect the model once you find what works.

ProximityParks, established in 2017, is a real estate developer that provides industrial park development and leasing services for last-mile distribution. It has properties in Ciudad de México, Nuevo Leon, and Jalisco.