Industrial Park

On Friday nights, we like to cruise through town in our sweet ride, with the windows down and our collars popped, blaring Barry Manilow loud enough for everyone around us to enjoy. (We’re a local hero; we just know it.) Anyway, as we cruise, we drive through neighborhoods full of houses and apartment buildings. We drive through shopping centers. We drive through nature preserves. And sometimes, we drive through industrial parks.

Industrial parks are areas that have been zoned for specific commercial uses. Manufacturing and storage facilities, for example, are often found in industrial parks, as are things like chemical plants, refineries, and office buildings. A lot of times, we can find industrial parks near railroad tracks or ports, since a lot of shipping and receiving tends to go on.

Zoning laws often attempt to put some space between heavy industrial parks and residential neighborhoods. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t...and some poor soul ends up with a chemical plant or an airport as a next-door neighbor.