Aerospace and defense company Loft Federal opened a 60K SF facility at Candelas Innovation Park in Arvada.

Loft Federal, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Loft Orbital that offers space mission services, will use the facility at 19850 State Highway 72 to develop, integrate, test and demonstrate its mission payload concepts and software capabilities, the company said in a statement. The space will also be used to collaborate with the company’s partners and government customers.

“Our federal customers need reliable access to orbit, and mission systems that can be engineered, integrated, secured, tested, and operated against real operational requirements,” Loft Federal Vice President of Growth Chris Daywalt said in the statement. “This facility provides the dedicated infrastructure required to support this mission model.”

Loft Federal plans to use the facility for expanded autonomy testing, mission planning and infrastructure to support classified programs. 

The Arvada location will support 100 new employees, who will be hired over the next 12 months, Daywalt told the Denver Business Journal.

Loft Federal will keep its 30K SF integration and testing center in Golden, according to the DBJ.

“We grew out of that [Golden] facility, but we needed a dedicated facility to perform secure operations for the U.S. government,” Daywalt told the DBJ, adding that Loft Federal spent more than $10M on the Arvada space.

Loft Federal is leasing about 72% of Candelas Innovation Park’s first building. A second, 100K SF building is vacant. The development plans to add two more buildings, totalling nearly 174K SF, on a build-to-suit basis, according to its website.

Loft Federal isn’t the only aerospace and defense company expanding.

Colorado-based Ursa Major opened a 25K SF manufacturing facility in Longmont to expand the production of its avionics and in-space propulsion system. 

The new location can seat more than 125 employees and allows the company to scale its hypersonics and solid rocket motor programs at its Berthoud facility, Ursa Major said in a statement.

The expansion grows Ursa Major’s presence to three locations in Colorado, including Berthoud and Galeton, a community northeast of Greeley. 

The company has about 300 employees in Colorado and is expected to create up to 1,850 new jobs in the Centennial State. For doing so, it will receive up to $35.25M in job growth incentive tax credits over eight years from Colorado’s Economic Development Commission.

Colorado is home to more than 2,000 aerospace companies, up 24% since 2021, according to Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade Executive Director Eve Lieberman.