The Methodology
How North Star Finds Opportunities
Over time, North Star developed a repeatable, patent-pending methodology for identifying and evaluating logistics development opportunities. It screens markets, identifies candidate sites, evaluates feasibility, and supports development through to completion. The projects on this site - Winnie and Barstow among them - came out of it. The software described below, iVerify, is the implementation of the methodology, not the product itself.
Site sourcing
iVerify: find the market, find the site, validate the return path
iVerify answers one expensive question: is this the right piece of land, before major money is spent on it. For transportation-oriented and industrial real estate, the wrong site is usually discovered late, after diligence and engineering are already paid for. iVerify moves that discovery to the front of the process.
It works at two ends of the same problem. From the desk, a user draws an area anywhere in the covered geography and iVerify returns a written, sourced screening report: parcels, flood, terrain and soils, corridor traffic, competition, and documented need. From the field, a person walks a site with a phone, captures the GPS boundary and geotagged photos, and syncs when back online. Between them sits a national screening engine that ranks locations for specific transportation and industrial land uses.
iVerify does not always begin with a parcel. It can begin with a market, an operating network, a corridor, a use, or a particular property, then direct the same underlying data at whichever question is being tested. The data is reusable; the question changes. The same traffic, carrier, parcel, lodging, freight-generator, competition, and demographic information can be pointed at truck parking, industrial outdoor storage, a fleet terminal, a relay network, a hotel, a travel center, or a mixed-use corridor development.
Operator-led origination
Begin with the operator, not the parcel
North Star can begin with an operator's business rather than with a site. Route networks, customer locations, existing facilities, equipment flows, driver schedules, and operating constraints can be analyzed to identify places where purpose-built real estate may improve the network.
Once a candidate zone is identified, the platform defines the site requirements, screens properties, tests the economics, and determines the appropriate combination of uses. The work runs from operating data to real estate: network, to candidate zone, to facility requirements, to candidate sites, to development plan.
Example: relay facilities
A carrier operating defined long-haul routes may depend heavily on team drivers. North Star can test whether strategically located relay facilities could let drivers, tractors, or trailers exchange at planned intervals. The path is the same: routes, to relay zones, to facility requirements, to candidate sites, to development plan.
A relay site might begin as secure parking and staging. Depending on demand, it could also include lodging, food, showers, fueling, maintenance, offices, or third-party parking. The final development is determined by the operating need and the economics of the location. The platform is used to test whether a relay network would outperform the current operation, not to assert that it will.
Output
Three kinds of report
iVerify produces three different reports for three different purposes. They are not variations of one template.
Screening site report
Draw an area and iVerify writes a structured assessment of that ground: overview, parcels, flood, terrain and soils, corridor traffic, competition, documented need, and target parcels with ownership and value. A quality gate blocks any report with an empty parcels, traffic, or zoning layer, a missing section, or verdict language in the body. It reports what the data shows; it does not sell.
Field / on-site report
Content captured by a person on the ground: a walked GPS boundary, numbered geotagged photos placed on the map, and conditions. It exports as GeoJSON, KML, Shapefile, QGZ, a photo package, or a full bundle for a surveyor or engineer. Where the screening report is a hypothesis from public data, the field report is ground truth.
Market reports, one per development type
Not about a single site but a market, and there is one for each use model: parking, IOS, travel plaza, fleet terminal, distribution, port and rail, petrochem. Each quantifies the modeled demand for that use in the market, sets it against what already exists on the ground, and points to modeled candidate locations. The parking version is the fullest, setting corridor parking demand against measured supply and identifying the gap. Every version states plainly that it is a national screening result, not an occupancy-calibrated forecast, and a modeled point is labeled a calculated location, never an existing facility.
The engine
National screening models
The engine evaluates land against a library of use profiles, each with its own demand signals, competition logic, and minimum site size. Each model carries two independent statuses, and both are shown on the page. Data readiness says whether every scored signal for the use is loaded and verified, or whether a defining layer is still loading and the ranking is preliminary with the gap stated. Model evidence says how many built facilities the trained model learned from; where the set of known examples is small, the app marks the model experimental and its number reads as a direction, not a verdict. A use can be fully loaded on data and still experimental on evidence, and the table shows both.
| Model | What it sites | Data | Trained model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Truck / trailer parking | Overnight and staging parking against a measured corridor shortage | Ready | Established |
| IOS / contractor laydown | Industrial outdoor storage, container and equipment yards | Ready | Experimental |
| Port / rail support | Sites serving seaports, inland ports, intermodal ramps and rail yards | Ready | Experimental |
| Petrochem / liquid-bulk support | Support land for refineries, pipeline and liquid-bulk terminals | Ready | Experimental |
| Truck plaza / travel center | Fuel-and-service plazas on high-flow interchanges | Preliminary | Established |
| Fleet / 3PL terminal | Carrier and third-party-logistics terminals and yards | Preliminary | Established |
| Distribution center | Large-format warehouse and distribution land | Preliminary | Experimental |
The truck-parking model is the fullest expression: it measures corridor demand across roughly 86,000 corridor-miles, compares it against about 5,500 mapped parking facilities holding roughly 272,000 truck parking spaces, and allocates candidate locations to capture the largest uncovered gap across the 756 ranked U.S. metro and micro market areas. Each market is ranked per use; markets with too few sampled locations are left unranked rather than guessed. Where the supply picture is incomplete, the model treats its gap as an upper bound rather than overstating the shortage.
These models identify the primary demand thesis. The resulting development may include complementary commercial components - such as lodging, food, retail, maintenance, or fuel - when supported by the location and project economics.
From demand to development
The platform does not force every opportunity into a predetermined property type. It identifies the underlying demand, and the eventual development may combine several responses.
| Demand source | Possible development response |
|---|---|
| Freight corridor shortage | Truck and trailer parking |
| Defined carrier routes | Relay and staging facilities |
| Port or rail activity | IOS, container storage, transload support |
| Driver dwell and overnight demand | Lodging, food, showers, and parking |
| High-volume interchange | Travel center, restaurant, convenience retail |
| Fleet concentration | Terminal, maintenance, fueling, and offices |
The method
From national screen to field screen
iVerify works through four screens, each narrowing the last. The national screen ranks every U.S. market for each use model, so the search starts from the whole country, not from a hunch. The market screen applies those same models inside one market and shows where the conditions for the use concentrate. The site report gets down to parcels: ownership, value, flood, zoning, access, traffic, competition, and the documented need for one drawn area. The field screen is a person on the ground with the site on a tablet, walking the boundary, placing geotagged photos, and recording conditions, which turns the desk screening into ground truth.
The scoring behind those screens combines two methods. Deterministic screens compute the measurable facts: corridor volumes, parking supply counts, distances, and minimum site size for the use. A trained model, XGBoost trained per use on the platform's own assembled facts, then weighs those facts the way actually built facilities occurred, and the two are shown together so a user always sees the plain-language drivers behind a number. Results are grouped into tiers, labeled as historical location fit rather than a prediction of return, and a market whose data is too thin is marked insufficient instead of scored.
The foundation
Data and protection
iVerify integrates fifty external data sources from forty-three providers across thirteen domains: federal, state, and open-data origins assembled into one picture of a location. Nothing in a report is invented; every figure traces to a named source, and every gap is disclosed. The platform runs on North Star's own infrastructure, so coverage and refresh cadence are controlled directly rather than rented from a data vendor.
iVerify's screening and cohort-grading methods are the subject of a provisional patent application (No. 64/098,118, filed June 24, 2026). Patent-pending status is treated as a deliberate deterrent in place of blanket non-disclosure agreements.
Software verification. The scoring engine is live and can be checked directly. Run the proof-of-life attestation - it recomputes on every load: registry build stamp, data-source catalog, the full use-model roster with ranked counts, a fixed national-screen query returning a live ranked result, and the model-artifact hash. Nothing on that page is cached or staged.
From screened site to operating facility
The development system, stage by stage
North Star runs one methodology across the full development lifecycle. The front end (iVerify) finds and validates opportunities; the back end plans, prices, finances, and executes them. The nine stages below are the operating framework a project moves through. They are not a one-way conveyor belt: a result in a later stage routinely sends the work back to an earlier one, and the system keeps the history so the project does not start over.
Stage 1 · iVerify
Originate
A project can begin with a market need, an operator’s routes or operating constraints, a corridor, a use concept, or a property. North Star originates from both directions: land seeking its best use, or an operating problem seeking the right location and facility. The platform turns any of these starting points into a defined opportunity to test.
Produces: a defined opportunity and the reason it is worth screening
Stage 2 · iVerify
Screen
Before spending time or capital, candidate markets and locations are compared at scale. iVerify ranks U.S. freight markets for a chosen use, then ranks candidate corridors and sites inside a market, so the field narrows on evidence rather than on which deal walked in the door.
Produces: a ranked short list of markets and sites for a chosen use
Stage 3 · iVerify
Investigate
The short list is tested for whether it is physically, legally, commercially, and financially viable: parcel fabric and ownership, access, flood, soils, utilities, zoning, corridor demand, competition, preliminary economics, and a probable exit. Gaps in the public record are stated as gaps, not filled with guesses.
Produces: a site assessment with the disqualifiers and unknowns named
Stage 4 · back end
Control
When a site survives investigation, North Star secures a right to proceed: an option, purchase contract, development agreement, lease, or joint venture. Control is kept distinct from ownership, because a developer may investigate before control, investigate further during a control period, and walk if the evidence fails.
Produces: an enforceable right to advance the site
Stage 5 · back end
Plan
With control in hand, the project takes shape: the use and unit mix, the site plan, the engineering approach, the operating concept, the schedule, and the delivery strategy. Reusable models mean the plan is assembled from prior work rather than drawn from scratch each time.
Produces: a program, site plan, and delivery strategy
Stage 6 · back end
Prove
Design, cost, revenue, financing, risk, and return are tested against defined go / no-go thresholds. These are not independent steps: design changes cost, cost changes feasibility, and feasibility changes design, so the platform iterates them together until the project clears the threshold or is stopped.
Produces: a proven case at defined return thresholds, or a clean stop
Stage 7 · back end
Entitle
The project obtains its governmental permissions: zoning and land-use approvals, permits, incentives, and utility commitments. A zoning or engineering response here frequently loops back to redesign or reprice, which the system records rather than losing.
Produces: the approvals and commitments needed to build
Stage 8 · back end
Execute
Capital closes, control is activated into ownership or a lease position, the work is contracted, components are procured, and the project is built and placed into operation. Procurement carries an owner-direct bias where it lowers cost without giving up control or quality.
Produces: a built, operating project
Stage 9 · back end
Monetize
The economic outcome is selected and executed: sell, refinance, lease, operate, retain, recapitalize, or joint venture. A development may create long-term operating income rather than a single sale, and the plan carries that choice through to the end.
Produces: the realized economic outcome
Tools
The instruments the business runs
Six working instruments, each doing one job in the method.
Screening
iVerify
Screens U.S. freight markets down to one parcel, as a shareable report.
Recruiting
ProHRHQ
A free ATS matching CDL drivers with FMCSA-verified carriers.
Cost & proforma
iDevelop
Prices the build from reusable parts and resolves the deal.
Community planning
iPlacer
A planning lens - people, location, access, competition, economics, regulation.
Site planning
iSitePlan
Upload a parcel; it lays out roads and lots to export.