A new building type: Industrial park

[Potato_capitalis]

I’ve shared this idea a couple of times in this forum, but it really went unnoticed by David or users. So I decided to ask you-all how does community feel about it.

The concept is straightforward: a factory equivalent of the shopping mall. One entity builds a new type of buildings (an industrial park) to lease its space to build factories.

In my mind both government / mayor and commercial companies can build it.

Why? To resolve a couple of issues (e.g. a lack of real estate mid and late game, pollution spread all over cities), while enhancing gameplay - like more landless or cashless gameplay options. Probably would also benefit in the scope of freight costs (reducing it or eliminating if goods are moved between factories within the same industrial park). Since shopping malls are already in the game it doesn’t seem like a very time consuming thing to add.

Overhaul I think that shopping mall equivalent for other firms would be also beneficial (offices for service firms, banks HQ, insurance HQ, internet and software companies; technological parks for R&D), so I added such option in the poll.

[Ether]

I think this is actually a really elegant solution to the real estate issues of mid- to late-game (ESPECIALLY in modded games with a plethora of added products). You could charge rent for tenants, or simply save on space by solely cramming in your own factories and warehouses. As for other firms, I think simply using already existing commercial high-rises would be perfect. There could still be local simulated rents to provide reliable income, but you could add spaces for internet company, banking, and insurance HQ's; alongside spaces for R&D.

Having these new buildings, in conjunction with a tendency slider for AI companies to rent office space & industrial park space vs. building dedicated facilities, can truly expand the possibilities for new/modded content in the game. High priority addition IMO!

[Stylesjl]

It is an interesting idea, even if the specific concept of an industrial park does not come to pass it might be interesting to allow Shopping Malls to be modded so that they can use non-retail firms. That would you could potentially mod in industrial/tech parks or even data centres (for software/internet firms).