It has finally happened. The “child” that has been The Aquaponic Source has finally outgrown its parent’s basement and needs to find a place of its own. We’ve certainly been fortunate to be able to incubate our new business in our empty nest these past three years, and a commute that can be measured in feet vs. miles has been wonderful. But we now have seven employees trying to work down there (Alan and I work in other rooms in the house during the day), some of whom are improvising desks on top of boxes, and have filled the last available set of shelf space. It is time.
Our search for a new space actually started at the end of March when we first met with our tenant broker, Mark Casey, and told him that we thought we needed about 2500 – 3000 sq. ft. of warehouse / flex space in Boulder. After some careful analysis, however, that number went up to 4000 – 4500 sq. ft. of space once we realized that we are already occupying 2300 sq. ft. in our current cramped circumstances! We quickly settled on a 5000 sq. ft. space (notice how that number keeps going up?) that was basically an unfinished warehouse with no interior walls that was going to need to be entirely built out.
Over the next month and a half we negotiated with the potential landlord, worked with an architect friend to draw up plans, and met with general contractors. We finally realized that it was just going to be too much work, brain damage and time to make that space work for us. Plus, during that time we realized that we would probably quickly outgrow that space…and we were about to sign a five year lease.
The search for a home for The Aquaponic Source began again, but this time we were open to both larger spaces and being located outside of Boulder. Again, a single excellent choice jumped out of the crowd right away. It was a 7600 sq. ft. space in Longmont, CO, which is about a 20 minute commute for us (my outside limit for drive time) and was already configured to a nearly perfect layout. The landlord agreed to make the few changes we needed at his expense and to complete the changes in a month!
We negotiated the lease terms (a rather grueling experience that could be the subject of an entire post of iits own) and signed the lease two weeks ago. We expect to move in to our new company home at the beginning of August! It will feature a small retail store, an R&D lab, a classroom, offices, a manufacturing space and plenty of warehouse space.
Our goal is to become an Aquaponics Center for local Coloradans, and a destination location for aquapons visiting our beautiful state. We plan to hold regular tours and classes, and be available to help you with your aquaponics needs in-person just like we’ve been doing the past three years in our internet, phone, email, audio / visual way. We are all so excited it feels like Christmas as a child around here…..but without the snow and songs. Please wish us luck!
