Feasibility Before Capital Commitments

Five checks to screen a site quickly:

1. Entitlement fit: Confirm use is allowed by right. Identify overlays (shoreline, airport, TOD), critical areas, and any conditional/variance paths. If yield depends on discretionary relief, consider passing or adjusting assumptions.

2. Throughput geometry: Test 53’ truck paths, dock counts, trailer storage, and separated employee/visitor circulation. If circulation requires “heroic” maneuvers, costs and incident risk rise.

3. Utilities: Verify available water, sewer, storm, and power. Identify potential off-site upgrades, fees, and lead times.

4. Dirt & drainage: Order a Geotech report as early as possible; assess liquefaction/soft soils, infiltration feasibility, detention volume, and water-quality treatment. It’s often Stormwater that drives the site plan footprint.

5. Pre-application: A pre-app meeting gives the County or City a chance to look at the project before you spend money on the full design. In this meeting, you can ask questions and get an exact list of the permits that the jurisdiction will be requiring.

Feasibility Contents

Land Use & Code Path

• Allowances and limits: uses, height, coverage, setbacks, screening, frontage work.

• Known triggers: SEPA, wetlands/buffers, floodplain, steep slopes, traffic concurrency, frontage obligations.

• Decision: what is buildable as-of-right vs. what depends on discretionary approvals.

Site & Civil Concepts

• Test fits comparing single-tenant vs. multi-tenant options.

• Fire access, hydrant spacing, and apparatus turn templates.

• Preliminary stormwater concept (detention vs. infiltration, WQ treatment) with placeholder volumes.

Utilities & Cost Signals

• Written capacity confirmations where possible.

• Rough-order costs for on/off-site work and connection fees.

• Power availability and lead times flagged as schedule risks.

Market & Exit Assumptions

• Submarket lease rates, TI/LC norms, absorption expectations.

• Exit cap sensitivity and yield-on-cost ranges.

Financial Model & Sensitivities

• Hard/soft costs with contingency bands tied to risk (soils, utilities, off-sites).

• Schedule-driven interest carry.

• Base / Optimized / Stress scenarios to illuminate decision points.

Deliverables should emphasize assumption transparency and a ranked risk register (probability × impact), not promises.

Designing for Operations (What Tenants Actually Feel)

• Dock-to-floor alignment: Size dock counts and spacing to the likely tenant mix (3PL vs. assembly vs. cold storage).

• Safety & speed: Physically separate truck, employee, and visitor flows; minimize reversing; keep fire lanes honest.

• Futureproofing: Plan demising options, redundant conduit, and slab loads that accept equipment changes.

• Practical ESG: Daylighting, solar-ready roof structure, EV-ready conduit stubs, durable/low-maintenance landscape that still screens.

• Storm-led layout: Assume detention/treatment area first; organize buildings and parking around that constraint.

Permitting Path

1. Pre-application meeting(s): Bring a real site plan, turning paths, and preliminary drainage concept to surface constraints.

2. Parallel due diligence: Run geotech/environmental desktop and utility coordination before deep design spend.

3. SEPA/Critical areas (if applicable): Clarify study scope and public comment windows; reflect in schedule and carry.

4. Staged submittals: Consider advancing site/civil while building plans iterate; track dependencies explicitly.

Aim for predictability over speed; conservative review cycles reduce re-design risk and change orders.

If you’d like help with either the design or feasibility stage of your industrial project, feel free to give us a call or fill out our form with more information.