Two shallow-bay buildings totaling about 133,133 square feet broke ground at Compark470 in Parker in May 2026, with completion expected in the first quarter of 2027 and access to E-470 and I-25. Shallow-bay product is the size of building most light manufacturers actually need: a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of square feet, 24 to 28 feet clear, a handful of docks and enough yard for a box truck and a trailer. The design choices that make or break it are small, and they are cheaper to get right in the shell than in the fit-out.
We build and fit out flex and light manufacturing buildings for owner-operators and for developers who lease to them. Typical users are fabricators, electronics and instrument assemblers, packaging and kitting operations, and contract manufacturers with a showroom or lab on the front of the building. Each of those uses stresses a different part of the building. A fabricator stresses power and slab, an assembler stresses cleanliness and office ratio, and a kitting operation stresses dock count and mezzanine capacity.
That is why we ask for the process before we draw the shell. A building designed for generic flex use works for several tenants and perfectly for none. A building designed for your line works for you and resells to the next operator because the infrastructure is already in.
Where flex space is being built
Flex and light-industrial supply on the Front Range is concentrated in business parks near the interstates. Thornton's 25 Commerce Park, bought by Rockefeller Group in September 2023, is planned as three buildings totaling 453,550 square feet on 35.6 acres at East 152nd Avenue and Washington Street. Boulder's Flatiron Park is a master-planned business park of about 200 acres with roughly 2.3 million rentable square feet and more than 100 companies. The two parks show the range: a new greenfield campus in Thornton and a mature research and light-industrial park in Boulder.
For a buyer, the market lesson is that a user's fit and the building's position in the park matter. In a mature park, tenant improvement and infill work dominate. In a new park, the shell design is still open and you can shape column spacing, dock position and power before the slab is poured. We advise on both, and we price the difference in cost.
The building forms we deliver
Flex builds fall into a few forms. A rear-load building has docks at the back and offices at the front, with 24 to 30 feet clear. A cross-dock form has docks on both sides and suits distribution. A shallow-bay form is narrow, with 100 to 130 feet of depth, and suits small users. We build all of them in tilt-wall, pre-engineered metal or a hybrid, and we compare the forms in the program stage; the structural options are discussed under metal building construction.
Specialized forms deserve their own conversation. A flex and light industrial building with a front-of-house showroom, lab or medical suite may combine uses, and an occupancy analysis decides the fire separations. If your users include clinics or health-adjacent offices on the front of the building, we handle the medical office fit-out as a separate occupancy with its own separation and HVAC.
What is in a light manufacturing scope
The shell scope covers site grading, utilities, building pad, slab, structure and envelope, with the office core and restroom core roughed in. The fit-out scope covers power distribution, lighting, makeup air and exhaust, compressed air, process piping, drains, and the specialized finishes the process needs. Where a manufacturer wants a clean assembly area, we build a sealed zone with filtered supply air, smooth washable surfaces and controlled entry.
We pay special attention to power. Light manufacturers often need 480-volt three-phase service with enough capacity for welders, CNC machines or ovens, and shallow-bay buildings are typically delivered with modest service. The utility interconnect is a separate application with its own timeline, which is why we ask for the load list at the start. We include equipment pads, bolted-down equipment foundations and floor trenching in the scope, and we connect them to our work on equipment pads and foundations.
Decisions that are hard to change later
Clear height, column spacing, slab thickness and electrical capacity are fixed by the shell and expensive to change. Clear height governs racking, mezzanine and crane options. Column spacing governs line layout. Slab thickness and reinforcement govern equipment loading, and a slab designed for light racking will not carry a press. We write these into a one-page building criteria sheet and ask the user to sign it before final design.
Expansion is the other item. Light manufacturers grow in bursts, and a building without a path to expand forces a move. We design end walls for future extension, size utility mains for the next phase and keep yard and truck court space for another bay. Where a user has an advanced manufacturing process, we link the design to advanced manufacturing requirements such as vibration control and process utilities.
Schedule for a small building
Small buildings can be built quickly, but the lead items are the same as for large ones. Electrical gear, rooftop equipment, dock doors and structural steel or precast panels drive the date, along with the city's review. We submit civil and building permits together when the jurisdiction allows it, order long-lead items at permit and build the underground utility work during the review so the slab can go in as soon as the permit is issued.
For a speculative developer, the target is a shell ready for tenant improvement; for an owner-operator, it is production start. We set the schedule to the date that matters and publish a three-week look-ahead so you see where the critical path sits.
Pairing with adjacent services
Many light-manufacturing owners combine the building with other work. Mezzanines add pick or assembly area, which we cover under mezzanines and platforms. Contractor-oriented projects often prefer ownership of small units, and the form is described in small-bay contractor condos. Operators with growth plans can ask us to phase the site, building and utilities.
If your operation is pharmaceutical or medical, the requirements are tighter, and we direct buyers to our work in pharmaceutical and life sciences. In every case the question is the same: what must the building do on the day it opens, and what must it allow next?
Start with the process, then the shell
Send us your equipment list, headcount and shipping pattern. We will recommend a building form, set the criteria sheet and give you a schedule from permit to production.
Common Questions
What clear height should a light manufacturing building have?
Most light manufacturing works at 24 to 28 feet clear. Higher clear helps with racking and mezzanines but increases wall height, cost and heating load. If you do not stack material or use overhead handling, extra height may not pay for itself. We test your actual process before settling the dimension.
How much electrical service should I plan for?
Plan from the equipment load list, not from the building's listed service. A fabrication shop and an electronics assembler have very different loads. We ask for nameplate data, size the service with the engineer and request the utility's estimate early, because the utility's timeline often sets move-in.
Should the building be tilt-wall or metal?
Both work in small buildings. Metal is usually faster and cheaper, while tilt-wall offers a heavier wall and a more durable envelope. We compare them on cost, schedule and the user's expansion path, and we show the comparison before you commit.
Can the building handle an office and lab at the front?
Yes. The front of a flex building typically holds offices, a showroom or a lab. The design must respect fire separation between the front and the industrial rear and give the front its own HVAC. We run an occupancy analysis early so the plans are correct from the start.
How do you handle future expansion?
We design end walls to be extended, size utility mains for later phases and reserve yard space for a future bay. Doing it in the first phase costs little. Doing it later without planning usually means relocating a main or a transformer.