A California-founded space company has planted a permanent flag in West Arvada, opening a 60,000-square-foot facility built to handle some of the U.S. government's most sensitive satellite work. Loft Federal's new Candelas Innovation Federal Operations and Integration Facility includes cleanrooms, a payload integration lab, and space being prepared to meet strict federal security standards, with the site expected to grow to around 100 employees, contractors, and mission partners as operations ramp up.
Loft Federal is the FOCI-mitigated, wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Loft Orbital, the San Francisco-headquartered space company founded in 2017 that also maintains facilities in Golden, Colorado, and Toulouse, France, according to Loft Federal. That structure exists because the parent company operates internationally, and federal regulations governing defense and intelligence contracts require a separately controlled U.S. entity to handle that work. As Mile High CRE reports, the Arvada facility is designed to support secure mission engineering, payload and software integration, and closer collaboration with government customers, industry teammates, and mission partners.
Inside the Candelas Facility
The building includes two dedicated ISO-8 cleanrooms measuring 336 and 480 square feet, an expansive high-bay integration area with a 1-ton portable gantry crane, and ESD-safe hardware development labs, with full TS/SCI classification capability expected within a year, per the company's facility page. Mile High CRE's report notes that initial cleanroom capabilities are set to be ready in October, and three additional spaces are being prepared to meet ICD 705 standards, the federal benchmark for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. Those standards, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, set mandatory physical, acoustic, and electromagnetic requirements for spaces that process classified data up to Top Secret/SCI, according to guidance summarized by Holland & Knight and Strategic Solutions Unlimited.
The facility also includes mission engineering workspaces, payload and mission integration laboratory areas, and secure development environments, with plans for expanded mission operations support, mission planning tools, autonomy testing, and infrastructure for classified program requirements subject to security approvals. Chris Daywalt said the facility provides dedicated infrastructure for payload integration, mission software development, and future secure operations support, per Mile High CRE's report. Loft Federal is also continuing to develop Vault, described as its onboard mission execution and edge autonomy framework, in support of secure payload operations, autonomy-enabled mission operations, missile warning and tracking missions, and tactical ISR missions.
A Real Estate Bet on Federal Space Work
The facility sits inside Candelas Innovation Park, a 31.64-acre, 350,000-square-foot industrial park in West Arvada developed through a joint venture between Denver-based OCC Industrial and Wichita-based Garvey Ventures, according to Mile High CRE's earlier coverage of the park's development. Ware Malcomb served as architect on the Candelas building, with Golden Triangle Construction as general contractor, the same outlet reported.
Why Loft Federal Needed a Classified-Ready Hub
The Arvada buildout follows a string of major federal contract wins that created direct demand for dedicated, classified-capable operations space. In April 2023, Loft Federal partnered with prime contractor Ball Aerospace and Microsoft on the Space Development Agency's $176 million NExT program, a deal to integrate, launch, and operate 10 experimental satellites using modified Airbus OneWeb platforms and Loft's Cockpit software, according to a joint statement carried by Ball Aerospace. In May 2025, Loft Federal was also selected as one of 12 defense contractors awarded a spot on the U.S. Space Force's $237 million STEP 2.0 contract vehicle, a program designed to accelerate on-orbit science and technology demonstrations through 2035, per data compiled by EquityZen.
Parent company Loft Orbital has the balance sheet to back that expansion, having raised $170 million in a Series C funding round in January 2025 and pushed its total funding past $186 million after deploying more than 25 on-orbit customer missions across 14 operational spacecraft, the company said in announcing the round. That commercial track record now feeds directly into Loft Federal's push into defense and intelligence work, where the Arvada site is meant to serve as the operational bridge between Loft's satellite platforms and government mission requirements.
Arvada Joins a Booming Colorado Aerospace Corridor
Loft Federal's move into West Arvada places it inside one of the country's densest aerospace clusters. Colorado ranks first among all U.S. states in private aerospace job concentration and second in total private aerospace employment, backed by nearly 350 aerospace companies generating $12.7 billion in economic output, according to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. The nine-county Metro Denver and Northern Colorado region alone holds 80.1% of the state's aerospace workforce, or roughly 29,540 private employees, and is home to more than 68% of Colorado's aerospace companies, the same data shows.
State officials have been leaning into that momentum. In August 2026, Governor Jared Polis signed Executive Order D 2026-013, directing state agencies to build a streamlined digital permitting portal aimed at fast-tracking expansion for strategic growth sectors including aerospace and defense manufacturing, Hoodline previously reported. Loft Federal's opening lands amid a wave of similar announcements across the region, including Ursa Major's new Longmont rocket plant and Voyager Technologies weighing a Centennial move backed by state incentives, both of which underscore how aggressively Colorado is courting defense and space manufacturers this year.
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