Among the various lessons that COVID-19 delivered to the construction industry, one seems to have particular staying power: When life hands you lemons, build a centrally located shipping and distribution hub.

Four years after lockdown pushed the world even further into online shopping than it already was, ecommerce shows no signs of returning to pre-pandemic levels. And neither does the construction market for the warehouses, data centers, railways, roads, ports and other infrastructure that makes it possible. A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a boom in warehousing and logistics centers continuing throughout the next decade.

Which is how Brinkmann Constructors came to build a speculative industrial warehouse as part of a new logistics center near the Denver airport.

HUB IN A HOT SPOT

DIA Logistics Park is a 226-acre, four-warehouse, Class A industrial and logistics park in Aurora, Colorado, about two-and-a-half miles from Denver International Airport and the E-470 Interchange, within an already-popular logistics hub. It’s the first speculative industrial development with a 40-foot-clear height in the Denver market.

While built-to-suit warehouses are designed to meet the requirements of specific occupants, speculative warehouses take an open-ended approach that can adapt to the needs of an ever-changing market and increased demand for flexible spaces. Based in St. Louis with offices around the United States, Brinkmann broke ground on DIA Logistics Park’s 628,000-square-foot Building I in early 2022. The company worked in partnership with Ambrose Property Group, an Indianapolis-based logistics and ecommerce real-estate development company that owns the park and will lease the warehouses within it.

Building I marks Brinkmann’s first partnership with Ambrose but not its first project of this type. Brinkmann also completed speculative industrial warehouses in Brighton, Colorado, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, in late 2023.

MOVE-IN READY

Because Building I is the first warehouse to be completed in the park, Brinkmann’s team had to keep the complex’s future warehouses in mind when planning and building. “We developed a 50-acre site, including a 625,000-square-foot speculative warehouse on about 25 acres of the site,” says Jason Somers, project director for Building I. “The other 25 acres was graded and prepped for a future warehouse anticipated to be about 1 million square feet.”

The team also had to factor in the swarms of delivery trucks, forklifts and other large vehicles buzzing around an industrial warehouse when designing the space. “Phase 1 included the construction of a regional detention pond,” Somers says, “and all associated utilities, plus trailer and vehicle parking.”

Building I includes 3,858 square feet of office space; four drive-in doors; 288 auto-parking spaces, with room for an additional 379 spaces as needed; and 176 trailer-parking spaces, with room for 49 more. The warehouse space features lighting to 30-foot candles, 92 dock doors, plus 60 dock positions equipped with 40,000-pound mechanical levelers, bumpers and dock seals. There are make-up air units for warehouse ventilation, and switchgear and tenant electrical panels for full 4,000-amp capacity. It’s all move-in ready—and customizable to a tenant’s needs.

Among innovative materials and techniques used for the warehouse, Somers notes that Brinkmann installed 40 non-load-bearing, curtain-wall glazing panels that help protect the building from water, cold and hot air as well as UV radiation. The panels hang off the main entrance of the warehouse structure like curtains and support their own weight.

ROOM TO GROW

In addition to considering the not-yet-built warehouses that will fill out the rest of the park, Brinkmann built Building I to be flexible enough to accommodate potential tenant growth. “The property was planned to allow for easy future expansion,” Somers says. “The east side of the building can be modified to accommodate additional dock positions as well as additional trailer storage. On the west side of the property, we set aside a large area for future vehicle-parking expansion.”

This forward thinking extended to the site’s detention pond as well. “The pond is sized to accommodate Building II,” Somers says, “making the development of that future building more streamlined.”

The $40-million project’s timeline got pushed back about three months amid the summer swelter of 2022, with record-breaking heat waves limiting work on the jobsite; Brinkmann finished up in October 2023. Given that “the DIA submarket [is] anticipating continued growth,” Somers notes, the company is ready for the next speculative industrial warehouse.

“Brinkmann values the relationship we’ve developed with Ambrose,” Somers says, “and we look forward to collaborating with them on future opportunities.”