The Real Finds Podcast, Episode 95: The Battery Real Estate Play and the Return of Main Street With Aaron Shavel

A conversation between Gordon Lamphere, J.D. of Van Vlissingen and Co. and Aaron Shavel, a licensed civil engineer with Jingoli Power and a policy fellow at the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure. Transcript edited for clarity.

Aaron Shavel: The real estate component of it is that there are folks looking at behind-the-meter, where they’re basically playing an arbitrage game. They’re able to look at the price of a real estate parcel that’s underdeveloped, an old used car lot, an abandoned house, whatever it is, and developers will look at it and say, hey, we know we can fit X number of megawatts on here, we understand the difference in price between peak and off-peak hours, and we think there’s a game to be played.

Gordon Lamphere: I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to the Real Finds Podcast, where we have real conversations with key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast we’ll be speaking with Aaron Shavel from Jingoli Power, who is also a policy fellow at the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure. Aaron is a licensed civil engineer with over a decade of experience in transit construction and design-build project delivery, including high-profile projects like the LIRR Elmont Station and MTA ADA upgrades across New York City. Today we take a deep dive into the rapidly expanding world of battery energy storage, how front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter systems work, what makes a great site for a battery project, and why the arbitrage window for some of these plays may be shorter than developers expect. We also get into the public-private partnership world, the role of pedestrian infrastructure in commercial real estate viability, and why the conversation around energy and real estate is really a conversation about the future of the commercial real estate industry. If you’re interested in infrastructure, energy, and how the industry is evolving, today’s podcast is well worth a listen. Aaron, thank you so much for hopping on today.

Aaron Shavel: Gordon, happy to be here.

Gordon Lamphere: We’ve seen real estate change a lot over the last fifty years, and it’s become increasingly technical. One of the big changes has been the advent of, I’d say, the battery boom. What’s going on in the world of energy, and what’s going on in the world of batteries as real estate?

Aaron Shavel: First off, somewhat of a disclaimer: I’m not in real estate. I’m coming at it from the construction side. I’m an engineer by training, focused on the actual construction of these facilities. With that said, I’m relatively new to the battery energy space too, but we’re all seeing it’s an emerging market starting to explode. This is not necessarily new technology, but it’s becoming ever more important for a couple of reasons. Obviously we’re trying to squeeze that last little bit of efficiency out of our existing grid, we’re trying to reduce our reliance on some of the less clean energy sources, and the technology itself is getting denser. You’ll hear front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter, and what that means is whether or not it’s being tied to an existing generation source, or whether it’s just pulling off the grid in kind of a price-arbitrage play.

Front-of-the-meter is where it really has real potential and is playing a larger part. We’re seeing this particularly in New York, with projects I’m involved on, where the state operators, the controlled monopoly operators, are trying to get rid of their peaker plants and level out the curve. You have consumption at nighttime when everyone gets home from work, and obviously that’s not when our renewables are producing electricity. So the idea is to flatten the curve: these batteries can charge at low-requirement times and discharge at peak. When they’re tied to existing generation, front-of-the-meter, they’re incredibly useful. You’re also seeing this tied to solar farms or wind plants, the same idea, because that’s not a consistent, regular energy source, but with a battery system you can modulate it better and get more consistency. This is just a piece of the puzzle. It’s important with any energy conversation to remember there’s no one silver bullet. I’m sure some will argue that with me, but it’s the sum of all the parts, and batteries are definitely a part of that.

Gordon Lamphere: As it’s part of the equation, what’s the biggest part going on right now from the construction standpoint, and what are you seeing built?

Aaron Shavel: Right now there’s kind of a mad rush to this whole thing, and it could be spurred by different states’ incentives, hey, we’re trying to get all this additional capacity out there. Where this feeds into what your audience is interested in is the real estate component. There are folks looking at behind-the-meter, basically playing an arbitrage game. They look at the price of an underdeveloped real estate parcel, an old used car lot, an abandoned house, and developers say, we know we can fit X number of megawatts here, we understand the difference between peak and off-peak prices, and we think there’s a game to be played. And again, I’m not an expert, but from a thirty-thousand-foot view, I think this has a negative network effect. The more batteries you have, the more the curve is flattened, the less that price spread exists. The whole point is that we’re trying to flatten the curve, and eventually we’ll get to that point. So in that regard, I’d say it’s a very short-window opportunity, but it’s exciting to see, and it’s only going to become more interesting as the technology and energy density get better. It’s all tied in with how we’re producing electricity; the batteries don’t get charged magically, the power has to come from somewhere.

That behind-the-meter arbitrage thesis, and its data-center-adjacent cousins, is exactly the kind of energy-first opportunity we examined in Valuing Chicago Data Centers and Adjacent Properties.

Gordon Lamphere: What does a great property look like, one that’s going to provide strong battery capacity and strong economics for a developer?

Aaron Shavel: You could say location is everything. In this case, you don’t necessarily want to be in too dense an area. I was looking at a prospective project in New York, and my first thought was, these battery packs weigh a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, you need a pretty big crane to pick and set those, and it’s a one-lane road, how are you going to set up a crane? Little things like that. There’s also the conversation that you still need to be somewhat near the consumption, because power is lost in transmission. There are projects where the economics make sense to put these out in the middle of nowhere, and you’re seeing them in the deserts in the Southwest and solar farms across coastlines. But you still need to thread the needle where you’re not in such a dense area that it’s difficult to build, but you’re also near some kind of urban core where there’s consumption.

Gordon Lamphere: When we’re talking about the urban core and consumption, a lot of the economics in some of these cases comes down to not just the private sector, but public-private partnerships. How are you seeing that play out in the New York market and markets generally?

Aaron Shavel: I can give one very specific example about the energy markets, then talk about P3s on a wider scope, because it’s relevant to all of our infrastructure. With the New York programs I was talking about, there’s a state-level initiative. Energy is always interesting because it’s not quite a free market; there are controlled monopolies or governmental forces putting a hand on the lever one way or the other. They’ve been very adamant that they’re closing their peaker plants. So under those initiatives, while they may not be putting money out there, they could be paving the way for permits, or there could be land lease agreements on existing generation facility sites to private operators to build out the battery packs. That’s one arrangement I’ve seen that works well: the public operator has the land, they’re able to get private money to go through the headache of putting this together, and the private side gets the benefit on the back end while having the proximity of these programs. I suspect we’ll see more of that.

Gordon Lamphere: In terms of the divide between successful and unsuccessful programs, one big divide is how it’s split between public and private partnerships. Are you seeing mostly private with partial public subsidy, or primarily public with the private sector tagging on?

Aaron Shavel: What I’ve seen in New York is it’s entirely the private sector initiating these projects, not necessarily with incentive, because I think the money is secondary, but more with limited permissions from the state agencies.

Gordon Lamphere: Let’s transition out of batteries. There’s another hot topic in real estate, and that’s transportation. It’s a huge issue for housing and economics. What are you seeing in terms of transportation playing out in the New York market, and from a construction and economic development standpoint across the United States?

Aaron Shavel: Transportation construction is where I spent the majority of my career, first and foremost on the MTA subways. I could go down a rabbit hole; I love talking about trains and how important they are to the economics, but also to the identity of the city. New York is seeing a bunch of exciting projects. The Second Avenue Subway is going into its second phase, and there’s finally progress on the Interborough Express. The MTA is continuing to commit not only to inner-city transit but also to their commuter rails, which is promising. Other agencies around the country are trying to do the same, but they’re facing either political headwinds or changing habits. I lived in Manhattan for ten years, and I’m a strong advocate of public transportation. It’s an incredibly freeing thing not to be tied to your car, and especially in New York, it’s a great equalizer. We often have a negative stigma in the United States about what public transportation means, that it’s for certain people, and that’s a little shortsighted. It’s incredibly freeing not to have to get into a car for everything.

That said, I grew up in the suburbs, I have a car, I understand that freedom, and it is wonderful to have a car. So whenever I talk about public transportation, and urbanism in general, it’s important to make the distinction that none of these discussions are zero-sum games. It’s about choice. It’s about being able to say, I’m going to ride my bike to pick up groceries, I’m going to walk to the library, and okay, I have to run an errand, so I get in my car. All three of those weren’t in the car, and ultimately that’s a wonderful way to live, having those options and civic institutions close to you. That ties into the real estate conversation, because it steers what kinds of communities we build or are allowed to build. Very similar to the energy conversation, public transportation is not one or the other; it’s all part of the same equation, and the pieces stack on top of each other.

Gordon Lamphere: I’ll say this definitively: the project we’re working on right now, to potentially develop a large multifamily complex, is going to be primarily driven by multiple avenues of transportation, walking, busing, and automobile use. My wife and I live in a community that’s unique in the sense that you can walk, take the train, and drive basically anywhere in the Chicagoland area. I think more Americans would like to do that, but there certainly is a stigma. So how do we avoid the stigma associated with public transportation when so many Americans want the ability to do it, they just don’t know how to get there?

Aaron Shavel: A couple of things are at play. First, a lot of the rhetoric one way or the other can be pretty divisive and self-defeating. You’ll hear about the war on cars, and that gets a visceral reaction; people feel attacked and don’t want to give up their freedom. So changing the tone is really important. Part of my attitude is that sidewalks are a great place to start. Sidewalks, crosswalks, safe pedestrian-scaled infrastructure, because that’s something everyone can get on board with. Everyone should feel safe walking down the neighborhood, crossing a street, not having to look both ways fifteen times, having some faith in the speed limits. In terms of bolstering transportation, I feel a little more emboldened to say this now that I don’t work with the MTA as much, but part of the contention with a lot of these public agencies is a feeling that they’re not keeping up their end of the social contract. Ultimately the fare should go up; it shouldn’t be three dollars, it’s unusually subsidized. But at the same time, you need to uphold your end of the bargain, whether that’s safety or reliability. There’s a distrust there, and to the MTA’s credit, they’re making strides. The next thing is choosing projects that make sense. I want us to be ambitious and shoot for the stars and build inspiring projects, but we also need to be pragmatic, and some of these projects overshoot. A great example is the Second Avenue Subway, famously the most expensive subway in the world per mile. When they went to do the second phase, which they’re in the process of now, to the MTA’s credit they came back to the contractors and designers and asked for input, and they reduced about a billion dollars of overall cost by just asking, do we really need to do this? Some might say that’s defeatist, that’s settling, but it’s not. It’s being pragmatic.

I’m a huge proponent of sidewalks, because forget the fact that it makes your communities more inviting and gets people out interacting; even for folks taking the bus, go look at the bus stops in your local community. Chances are it’s a little sign, no overhang, no bench, and unfortunately that’s because we’ve designed for the lowest common denominator, hostile architecture. It starts there. In many cities we do have these networks, they’re just underused, because it’s the little things. You start with the little things first, get them right, and the rest will follow.

Gordon Lamphere: It’s been a great interview thus far. Let’s transition to talking about the future. One of my favorite Final Four questions: where do you see commercial real estate and public transportation going ten years out?

Aaron Shavel: I’m really optimistic and hoping for the return of the downtown Main Street. I’m sure a lot of your listeners will be thrilled to hear that. I think we’re searching for that sense of tangible community. We like to shop in that interaction. There are times you want to go to the big box store, but there are times you want to loiter and walk around and buy a coffee and a knickknack and have lunch. People are looking for that serendipitous interaction you have on a Main Street. So I think we’re going to see a resurgence of these small cities or small downtowns. Those are places where you may not need public transportation, but folks can live car-light. A city under a million people may not need a transit network, but with the right kind of system, you don’t need a car for every trip, and you get the same effects. I’m hopeful we’re going to see that return to small community, and I think it’ll have benefits beyond real estate, in civic engagement, community building, and community identity.

That Main Street resurgence, powered by the right retail mix as a neighborhood activator, is a dynamic we track across Chicagoland’s North Shore and infill corridors in our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q2 2026.

The other big part of the equation we haven’t talked about is autonomous vehicles, which, whether you like it or not, are going to be a huge part of our transportation network and might accelerate the car-light shift. A family of four might have one car or no cars and use AVs for the rest. It’ll be interesting to see how our infrastructure adapts to accommodate AVs in terms of loading, and what happens when they’re not making a trip. One of the optimistic outlooks for AVs is that you’re going to get rid of a lot of parking mandates. But at two a.m., where does the thing go? Does it go out of the city? There’s a lot of questions on how that’s going to change our built environment, and it would be very foolish of us to say we have all the answers. We thought ripping out our downtowns and putting interstates through them was the right answer forty, fifty years ago, and there are definitely issues with that we’re trying to remedy across the country. So we have to have a little humility and look at how AVs are going to change our downtowns and communities in a similar fashion.

Gordon Lamphere: Have you seen how autonomous vehicles are starting to shape communities, or do you think it’s going to be primarily a tipping point, where we reach seventy or eighty percent AVs on the roads and that’s when we see the massive shift?

Aaron Shavel: It’s definitely going to be a tipping point, and there are folks who write about this with much more expertise than I do. Their benefit is that they’re a network; they’re able to communicate with one another, eliminating the human element, so it’s only going to become more effective as that pendulum swings. That said, I hope we don’t get rid of personal car ownership. Muscle cars and sports cars and motorcycles are cool. It just might be a different thing; it may not be how you get to work every day.

Gordon Lamphere: One thing I’d love to follow up on about the future: you predicted a Main Street revival, and we’ve started to see that with experiential uses, particularly along Chicago’s North Shore and some upper-middle-class and middle-class neighborhoods where people have spending power. Are there certain factors a developer or community can use to help boost that return that you’ve seen work in local marketplaces, or do you think it’s going to be primarily driven by large global and national trends?

Aaron Shavel: I think the difference is going to depend on storefront size and exposure, and again, I’m not in real estate, this is just an observation. A great example: a corner I lived on in Manhattan had a full block of retail space on either end of the avenue, both empty. You go a block in either direction, older buildings, and you’d have twelve businesses, every single building occupied. To the point where you have to say, maybe the economics of a fifteen, twenty, thirty-thousand-square-foot convenience store are no longer viable, but ten one-thousand-square-foot shops are. So how does that factor in? People are looking for those multiple points of touch rather than the one-stop shop.

Gordon Lamphere: I think diversity of space, particularly space size, can be a huge factor toward the financial viability of a building. When we talk about viability, our podcast’s viability comes down to relevance, and one of the best ways to stay relevant is to learn more about an asset class or area of expertise that touches real estate. So what’s one thing regarding energy usage, batteries, or transportation that we should be talking about more in commercial real estate that we haven’t touched on today?

Aaron Shavel: Gordon, I’m going to say it again, I’m going back to sidewalks and pedestrian-scale infrastructure. The point being that if you’re having these attractions where people are coming, and you’re hoping for additional touch points, and you’re hoping they’ll stay longer and see more shops, it needs to be a place where people feel comfortable and safe to walk through. I happen to live in a corridor now with a bunch of wonderful local businesses, bars, and restaurants, and there’s one intersection where even as a former New Yorker I am very nervous walking across. So it really does go a long way. One thing I read is a book called “Killed by a Traffic Engineer,” and it basically goes through how traffic engineering is treated like a science but is really based on the wrong set of assumptions. We’re optimizing for car efficiency rather than car and pedestrian safety living in the same environment. So when we’re developing new spaces, and maybe some of your listeners are developing not just small developments but large-scale master plans, how people interact with the space is incredibly important. Are they going to stay longer, spend more money, have more touch points, want to live there, want to invest there? I think it’s as much part of the equation as what you’re putting in the storefronts or what kind of mixed use you’re building.

Gordon Lamphere: Do you think there are any communities in particular that do it well?

Aaron Shavel: I’ll give a shout-out to my current, temporary home. I’m here for the year, currently living in St. Louis. There’s always things that can be improved, but I’ve been incredibly impressed with some of these little pockets of neighborhoods. What’s unique is that, like a lot of American cities, the majority of these neighborhoods were built before the automobile, so they’re very close-knit and dense, and the streets are tree-lined and beautiful. There are a couple of wonderful neighborhoods with vibrant, walkable communities. You have to drive about ten or twelve minutes to each one, but once you park, you can spend the day. It’s really cool to see. In conjunction with that, they have a pretty impressive citywide bike network that’s continually expanding. I’ve been very impressed with my time here.

Gordon Lamphere: I’ve heard good things about St. Louis.

Aaron Shavel: It’s really terrific. I love living here.

Gordon Lamphere: In terms of hearing good things, one of the things we love about the podcast is a little advice, and we have a significant younger audience, maybe twenty-five percent of our viewers under thirty, which is relatively young for the real estate world. They love this question: if you could travel back to the start of your career, what advice would you give yourself?

Aaron Shavel: I’ve been very fortunate to have some really great bosses and mentors who drilled things into me. The advice I’d give myself is the advice I got. One, be curious, ask as many questions as possible. You might be an expert in one thing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have expertise in others; if anything, it’ll make you more dangerous as you go on in your career. My professional experience is in heavy civil construction, and through curiosity and professional networking I’ve been exposed to urbanism and all these other design elements. So continually be curious, be a continual learner, be a jack of all trades. The other thing is, do the homework. If you’re going to a meeting, working on a deal, or negotiating a contract, know it better than anyone else in the room. There’s no substitute for doing the homework. Those two things have done me well so far, and I have many more years to go, hopefully.

Gordon Lamphere: The whole point of this podcast isn’t just career advice, it’s the ability to dig in and find great individuals to learn from. My favorite question, and the whole reason we started this podcast, is to reach out to folks like yourself with a deep area of expertise. So who should be the next person we learn from on the podcast?

Aaron Shavel: I have a former colleague and dear friend, Victor Zhang, who like me is a professional engineer. He worked in construction estimating for fifteen years on big multi-billion-dollar projects across the country and has now developed his own construction technology software. The core of estimating, mitigating risk, and understanding all the components that go into it is relevant to your audience, not exclusively as a construction component but as risk. He’s very hands-on, understands what goes into those projects, and beyond that he’s incredibly knowledgeable and personable, a very good ambassador for construction and construction technology. I think he’d be a great guest.

Gordon Lamphere: We’ll have to reach out to Victor. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get in contact?

Aaron Shavel: Please look me up on LinkedIn; I try to share a lot about my policy writing there. I’m also on Substack, where I write about construction, infrastructure policy, and urbanism. Aaron Shavel on both platforms.

Gordon Lamphere: Thank you so much for hopping on today, and we have to have you on in the future.

Aaron Shavel: Gordon, it was great. Thank you.

Gordon Lamphere: Thanks again to Aaron, we appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us get quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with the Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q2 2026.