A 65-year-old brick and concrete plant along the South Platte River could soon be torn down and replaced with four sprawling warehouses, under a new redevelopment proposal from a national builder. The General Shale plant sits at 3003 S. Platte River Drive, near the border of Sheridan and Englewood, on a triangle-shaped property pressed between the river and a set of rail tracks.
Ryan Cos., described as a national developer and builder, has proposed knocking down the plant and putting up four large warehouses in its place, according to BusinessDen. The outlet reports the redevelopment would cover 50 acres of industrial real estate along the South Platte, while ConnectCRE puts the site at 50.5 acres and says it could yield 542,784 square feet of warehouse and office space. ConnectCRE reports that Ryan Cos. has already submitted the redevelopment documents to the city.
A Brick Plant Built in 1961 Gives Way to Logistics Space
The General Shale plant dates back to 1961, making the structure Ryan Cos. wants to demolish 65 years old, per BusinessDen's report. General Shale, which describes itself on its company site as North America's largest brick, stone and concrete block manufacturer, still owns the triangle-shaped parcel bounded by the South Platte River to the east and rail tracks to the west.
According to the same BusinessDen report, the new buildings are meant to offer flexible industrial space. ConnectCRE's account of the filing says the campus is designed to accommodate a mix of office/warehouse, distribution, logistics and light-industrial tenants — the kind of flexible footprint that has become standard for new Denver-area projects aimed at absorbing demand from multiple industries rather than a single user.
Two Phases, Four Buildings
The project is laid out in two phases. Phase one calls for two warehouses of about 94,000 square feet each, the trade publication's reporting states. Phase two would follow with a larger, 206,136-square-foot building alongside a 138,934-square-foot building, rounding out the four-building campus.
A Denver Industrial Market Sending Mixed Signals
The proposal lands at a complicated moment for Denver's industrial real estate sector. The Denver Post reported that more than 2 million square feet of warehouse and industrial space was leased across the metro in the third quarter of 2025, even as the amount of space under construction fell to just 3.3 million square feet by the end of that quarter. The newspaper described the development pipeline as having hit a five-year low after a run of major projects wrapped up, with year-over-year construction activity down nearly 23% — the lowest level of industrial space under construction since the fourth quarter of 2015.
Leasing demand has held up even as new building has slowed. The Denver Post's report put the metro's overall direct vacancy rate at 7.6% in the third quarter of 2025, down slightly from 7.7% a year earlier, while average industrial rent climbed to $10.05 per square foot, a 3.3% jump from the prior quarter and 5.2% higher than a year before. More recently, a market report from Cresa found vacancy had climbed to 9.3% in the second quarter of 2026, the highest level the firm has recorded in more than 20 years.
Other large projects around the metro show the scale of recent industrial activity. The Denver Post reported that PepsiCo occupied 1.2 million square feet at its newly completed bottling facility near Denver International Airport, and that the planned Aero 70 complex in Aurora includes two speculative warehouses estimated for completion in the first quarter of 2026. Those additions follow years of expansion in the sector — back in February 2020, the Denver Post reported that the region's industrial market had logged 18 straight years of positive leasing activity, with developers like Hyde Development and M.A. Mortenson planning a 2.2-million-square-foot project on 125 acres near E-470 and East 64th Avenue in Aurora, and another 122-acre park, the 76 Commerce Center, taking shape in Brighton with a planned 1.8 million square feet of warehouse and logistics space. The Denver Post also noted that the I-70-airport corridor remained the metro's largest distribution submarket at the time, with more than 87 million square feet of industrial space.
For now, the General Shale site remains an active brick and concrete plant, and the redevelopment exists only as a proposal submitted to the city. BusinessDen's report on the plan was written by Matt Geiger, who covers commercial real estate and development for the outlet and joined its newsroom in October 2023.
