Three levels of floor on one footprint change how a fulfillment building is built. An 855,000 square foot, three-level fulfillment center with 2.4 million square feet of floor area, announced in June 2017 near I-25 and 144th Avenue in Thornton with 1,500 full-time positions, is a useful reference. Upper floors carry robotic drive units, conveyors and racks, and the structure, the fire protection and the egress all have to be designed for that load, not for a warehouse with a mezzanine added.
Single-level fulfillment buildings follow a different logic. In Aurora, a roughly one million square foot, $130 million fulfillment center on Smith Road near Picadilly was announced with about 1,000 full-time jobs. Both buildings depend on an automation plan that is fixed before the structure is designed, because the vendor's floor loads, flatness requirements, charging and power densities decide the slab and the electrical service.
We build fulfillment centers as a coordinated package: the shell, the interior platforms, the slab, the electrical service, the fire protection and the site. Employee parking, van courts, truck courts and gate security are part of the same site plan, and we prepare them as a set. The operator's opening date is usually fixed, so we organize the schedule backward from that date and tell you early which items threaten it.
What the automation vendor needs from the structure
Automation vendors specify floor flatness and levelness, floor loads on every level, sprinkler requirements, power density per aisle and the placement of anchor bolts or embed plates. These are not negotiable once the vendor's design is complete, and a slab that misses its flatness target is expensive to grind. We bring the vendor to the preconstruction table, get the specification in writing and put it in the structural and slab drawings before the bid is let.
Multi-level buildings add vertical circulation, fire-rated shafts, stairs for egress and sometimes lifts for equipment and people. The platform structure is steel, and our mezzanines, catwalks and platforms work covers the framing, decking, handrails and connections that the process equipment sits on. Fire protection for high-piled storage across several levels, including in-rack sprinklers, must be settled with the fire official before the building permit.
Corridors where fulfillment is built
Fulfillment buildings need large parcels with a freeway interchange and a large labor pool. In Colorado Springs, a national e-commerce operator bought 69.2 acres in Peak Innovation Park, the 960-acre business park owned by Colorado Springs Airport, in February 2020 for $6.33 million to build a distribution and sorting center planned at about 4 million square feet over five stories, with 800,000 square feet on the first floor and more than 1,000 full-time jobs. That parcel sits in an airport-owned business park, in a market with a different labor pool and land cost than the north metro.
Near Denver International Airport, a May 16, 2022 amendment to Denver's Far Northeast Area Plan covers a greenfield site bounded by Tower Road, Himalaya Road and 70th and 72nd streets with potential to become a local employment center. The Denver International Airport area has road access through Peña Boulevard, which links to I-70, and E-470 has a full cloverleaf interchange with Peña Boulevard. Greenfield sites like this offer the scale that e-commerce operations seek, and each comes with entitlement steps that we build into the schedule.
Code, energy and permit items for large fulfillment buildings
Colorado local governments set their own commercial building codes, so the edition on the permit depends on the city or county. The Home Builders Association of Metro Denver tracker dated January 20, 2026 shows Adams County, Arvada and Castle Rock on the 2018 I-codes, Aurora and Arapahoe County on 2021, and Boulder, Golden and Cherry Hills Village on 2024. For a multi-site rollout, this means the same prototype can face different code editions from site to site, and we track that for every permit.
Energy code adds another layer. HB22-1362 requires any county or municipality that updates a building code on or after July 1, 2023 to adopt an energy code equal to or better than the 2021 IECC, and from July 1, 2026 the benchmark becomes the state model low energy and carbon code. For large buildings with big roofs and big loads, lighting, envelope and rooftop solar readiness are real design items. Our programmatic multi-site rollouts practice tracks those differences across locations.
Related building types and operators
A fulfillment center usually has a neighbor. Receiving and outbound buildings may be a conventional warehouse or a high-throughput distribution center, and the same site plan should serve both. Customers in e-commerce fulfillment often need the buildings to share a power service and a common truck court, and we plan the utilities accordingly.
Delivery and returns operations vary in scale. Smaller sort centers can use a single-level shell with a heavy dock presence, while larger centers use multi-level automation. Because the program varies by operator, we start with the operations plan and then develop the building to fit it, not the other way around.
Bring the automation plan with the site
Send the unit volume, the number of levels, the automation vendor and the opening date. We will test the structure, power and fire protection design against that plan and show the schedule risks before they reach the site.
Common Questions
How do multi-level fulfillment buildings differ structurally?
Upper levels carry live loads from equipment, racks and people, and the lower levels carry the weight of the upper ones. The structure requires more columns or heavier framing, fire-rated shafts and egress stairs. Fire protection design for several levels of storage is more complex than for a single level, and the fire official must review it.
Who decides floor flatness requirements?
The automation vendor does, based on how the drive units and conveyors move. We need the vendor's numbers in writing before the slab is designed, and we test the floor with a profilograph or equivalent after the pour. If the target is missed, correcting it by grinding is slow and costly.
Can the building be built before the automation vendor is chosen?
It can, but you may lose flexibility. A conventional shell with a flexible slab and extra power capacity can accept different vendors, though it may cost more. If you know the vendor, the building can be tuned to its equipment.
How do large parcels near the airport affect timing?
They add entitlement and infrastructure steps. A greenfield area under an area plan may require street, utility and drainage extensions before a building permit issues. We map those dependencies at the start and show them on the baseline schedule.
What is the biggest schedule risk?
Electrical gear and the automation installation window. The building has to be power-ready, sprinklered and flat before the vendor starts, and the vendor needs weeks or months to install. We protect that window by ordering gear early and by finishing the slab and fire protection before the vendor arrives.