The Opus Group has started construction on a 151,405 SF speculative industrial building in Thornton.

The building is the first phase of North Washington Commerce Center, a multi-tenant park at the southeast corner of 128th Avenue and Washington.

Slated for completion this summer, the building will offer 24 dock positions (expandable to 26), six drive-in doors and 303 parking stalls.

“This industrial park will be an attractive offering given its proximity and easy access to greater Denver and the north metro area,” Opus Senior Manager of Real Estate Development Brian Dietz said. “This speculative building can be tailored to the end user’s business needs.

Overall vacancy in the metro Denver industrial market continues to decline. At the end of the fourth quarter, the vacancy rate was 4.7%, marking the lowest vacancy for the market since the end of 2016, according to a report on the industrial market by Cushman & Wakefield.

“This drop in vacancy was driven by the largest single quarter for absorption on record with over 3.1M SF absorbed,” the report states. “While this number is inflated due to Sears retaking possession of a 1M SF sublease they had been marketing as vacant, the other 2.1M SF of absorption would still have been the largest figure for a quarter since 2007.”