Despite the pandemic, e-commerce growth is fueling the demand for warehouse spaces in the Twin Cities metro. For just about everyone in commercial real estate, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought economic challenges. Many offices are sparsely occupied, and the leasing outlook is uncertain. Many retail tenants are going bankrupt or closing stores. Hotels have seen the worst year that anyone can remember, because travel in the United States has dropped so much. But there is one bright shining star: industrial property. Demand just keeps growing. The pandemic has meant that people everywhere are increasingly shopping online and turning to e-commerce. That’s good news for industrial properties because e-commerce retailers need space to store all of the stuff they’re selling. Industrial is the rare commercial real estate market that can still support spec (short for “speculative”) development, in which a developer starts building a project with no signed leases in hand.