The building specs aerospace and defense tenants actually need, and why almost nothing on the market qualifies

A regional brokerage put it bluntly earlier this year: "The biggest constraint on growth is finding the right buildings." That is not a comment about total vacancy. It is a comment about how few buildings, of any size, actually have what aerospace and defense tenants need.

What they are actually screening for

• Electrical power capacity well above a typical warehouse, since manufacturing and testing equipment draws far more than racking and forklifts
• Clear, unobstructed overhead height for assembly and integration work, not just stacking
• Enhanced parking ratios, since these are labor-heavy operations, not automated distribution
• Security and entry controls, which matters more the closer the work gets to classified defense contracts

Older industrial buildings, the kind built decades ago for aircraft manufacturing, often score better on power and clear height than newer speculative warehouse product, which is optimized for pallets and conveyor lines instead.

A real example

FlightWave Aerospace Systems, which manufactures lightweight drones, recently expanded from 14,000 to 51,000 square feet in Torrance on a five year, $5.4 million lease, specifically because it needed higher power capacity and clear heights its old space could not provide. That is the pattern across this tenant category: they outgrow buildings on specs long before they outgrow them on square footage.

What this means if you own an older industrial building

A building you may have written off as functionally obsolete, low ceilings aside, might actually be exactly what this tenant pool is hunting for, if the power and clear height are there. Before you assume a building needs a full reposition to compete, get the electrical capacity and clear height measured and compared against what this tenant category is actually asking for. It is a cheaper question to answer than a renovation.