Across the country, parcels of underused real estate are setting the stage for a new wave of development sprouting up on the heels of artificial intelligence.

In Chicago, a sprawling steel mill complex is set to be transformed to house tenants across industries vying to boost technological breakthroughs. A weed-choked industrial site near Denver is targeted as a research facility with labs. In New York, a just-opened IBM building houses its most sophisticated computer, while tech giant Google plans to turn a vacant 8-acre California lot into a computing center to support its most cutting-edge software to date.

The projects are taking root in the service of quantum computing, a field using subatomic particles existing in more than one state to calculate at speeds far faster than traditional technology — and with a lower margin for error. Quantum processing is expected to lead to breakthroughs in how major tech firms from Google to IBM use artificial intelligence, as well as in such fields as cryptography, drug development and climate science.

Quantum computing has drawn the attention of economic development professionals as cities across the United States move to get ahead of what consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates could become a $2 trillion industry, and create hubs for research into the technology.

"We’ve seen infrastructure plays by real estate developers around AI, the cloud and data centers, and now they’re looking at locking down sites for quantum development as well," said Tracey Hyatt Bosman, managing director with New Jersey-based site selection and consulting firm Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co.

Quantum real estate

PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley company, recently chose the Chicago site to open a facility at an about 420-acre campus funded by Illinois and the U.S. Department of Defense. Developer Related Midwest is proposing a project that could include more than 59 million square feet of facilities, according to CoStar News reporting.

In Colorado, a state that beat out Illinois and others to land $40.5 million in federal funding from the almost $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act, a consortium called Elevate Colorado broke ground on a quantum computing research facility at an old industrial property in Arvada, northwest of Denver. The 70-acre property — formerly used as a mining research hub — is slated to be transformed into Quantum Commons, with labs, shared research facilities and office space to allow quantum startups to develop and commercialize their technologies.

Other regions such as Boston, New York, Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area are also vying with Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area to become Silicon Valley-style clusters to develop quantum computers.

New York City officials last year partnered with Westchester County to launch a statewide group aimed at attracting quantum computing research and manufacturing to the Empire State, the corporate home of IBM. The tech giant, a leader in quantum research, this year opened The Think Lab, a cutting-edge facility at its research headquarters in Westchester County’s Yorktown Heights that houses what IBM calls the world's most advanced quantum computer.

"About six or seven regions across the country will see early investment in real estate around labs, research centers and first-of-a-kind pilot facilities before it starts to percolate to the rest of the country," Bosman said.

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