E-commerce is driving strong growth in demand for industrial sites, according to a report from Newmark Knight Frank, a global commercial real estate company. “As consumers across economic and demographic spectrums continue to demand more rapid product delivery, developers have had to innovate their product and offer more highly efficient space in the largest urban markets,” the report said.

In coming weeks, crews in Delaware will begin to raze G.M.’s giant Boxwood Road factory, which was built in 1945 and once employed as many as 8,000 people but has been empty since the automaker’s bankruptcy in 2009. A $250 million project will replace it with four dividable buildings designed for the logistics industry, including a 40-foot-high ceiling and 600 feet between truck entry and exit points.

Fisker Automotive had planned to revive the plant by making luxury cars there before it went bankrupt in 2013, and demolition was not the first option for Mr. Hanna, a Newport native with ties to the 142-acre site. His father worked there as a plant engineer, and his uncle, who is now his business partner, had summer jobs mowing lawns as a teenager.

Mr. Hanna wanted to reconfigure the factory for today’s manufacturers, but after a year of trying, he was unable to generate enough interest. He concluded that the costs of manufacturing in the United States, especially the Northeast, were too high to find enough tenants to fill the plant’s 1.1 million square feet.

“Manufacturing is not entirely dead, but it’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in terms of our economy,” Mr. Hanna said during a tour of the building.