The Sun Empire industrial development, situated south of Denver International Airport. (Courtesy of Opus)
Aurora is getting more Zynergy.
The company behind the Zyn nicotine pouch, Philip Morris International, confirmed to BusinessDen that it leased 150,000 square feet in a new industrial building at 25000 E. 56th Ave. in Aurora. That’s minutes from a planned $600 million Zyn factory the company announced last year.
“As PMI U.S. continues to invest in the community, we have leased the space to help our accelerated hiring strategy and for external warehousing,” Philip Morris spokesman Sam Dashiell said in an email to BusinessDen.
The space is inside the smaller of two new buildings at the Sun Empire industrial development, a few miles south of Denver International Airport. Minnesota-based Opus is the developer behind the 169-acre project.
Philip Morris’ space comes with all the modern fixings industrial tenants have come to expect. The building has 32-foot-tall ceilings, dozens of dock doors and a transformer with up to 3,000 amps of power, according to a news release on the lease, which did not name Philip Morris as the tenant.
In addition to the building leased to Philip Morris, Opus has completed a 624,000-square-foot warehouse at Sun Empire, which has yet to be leased. The company plans to develop an additional 1.2 million square feet across three more buildings.
But leasing activity has slowed across the airport industrial market, said Aviva Sonenreich, broker with local shop Warehouse Hotline.
“Do I think the tariffs are entirely to blame? No, but they’re certainly a big part of why we haven’t seen any more large leases get inked this calendar year,” she said.
Sonenreich’s father, Izzy, owned a chunk of the 316 acres Opus purchased to develop Sun Empire, which is the approximate English translation of Sonenreich, a German surname. Opus later sold about half that land — 147 acres — to a Philip Morris entity for $61.5 million for the Zyn plant, public records show.
National real estate firm CBRE reports that the 800,000-square-foot plant constitutes about a quarter of all industrial development underway east of E-470. Across the entire metropolitan area, industrial leasing volume was down 19% between the first and second quarters of 2025, and down 11% between the second quarter of 2025 and the same period last year.
“We might just be at the very beginning of consumer spending pulling back,” Sonenreich said. “But then again, we’ve also been saying that since 2020. I suppose there might be more questions than answers in the macroeconomy at this time.”
The Sun Empire industrial development, situated south of Denver International Airport. (Courtesy of Opus)
Aurora is getting more Zynergy.
The company behind the Zyn nicotine pouch, Philip Morris International, confirmed to BusinessDen that it leased 150,000 square feet in a new industrial building at 25000 E. 56th Ave. in Aurora. That’s minutes from a planned $600 million Zyn factory the company announced last year.
“As PMI U.S. continues to invest in the community, we have leased the space to help our accelerated hiring strategy and for external warehousing,” Philip Morris spokesman Sam Dashiell said in an email to BusinessDen.
The space is inside the smaller of two new buildings at the Sun Empire industrial development, a few miles south of Denver International Airport. Minnesota-based Opus is the developer behind the 169-acre project.
Philip Morris’ space comes with all the modern fixings industrial tenants have come to expect. The building has 32-foot-tall ceilings, dozens of dock doors and a transformer with up to 3,000 amps of power, according to a news release on the lease, which did not name Philip Morris as the tenant.
In addition to the building leased to Philip Morris, Opus has completed a 624,000-square-foot warehouse at Sun Empire, which has yet to be leased. The company plans to develop an additional 1.2 million square feet across three more buildings.
But leasing activity has slowed across the airport industrial market, said Aviva Sonenreich, broker with local shop Warehouse Hotline.
“Do I think the tariffs are entirely to blame? No, but they’re certainly a big part of why we haven’t seen any more large leases get inked this calendar year,” she said.
Sonenreich’s father, Izzy, owned a chunk of the 316 acres Opus purchased to develop Sun Empire, which is the approximate English translation of Sonenreich, a German surname. Opus later sold about half that land — 147 acres — to a Philip Morris entity for $61.5 million for the Zyn plant, public records show.
National real estate firm CBRE reports that the 800,000-square-foot plant constitutes about a quarter of all industrial development underway east of E-470. Across the entire metropolitan area, industrial leasing volume was down 19% between the first and second quarters of 2025, and down 11% between the second quarter of 2025 and the same period last year.
“We might just be at the very beginning of consumer spending pulling back,” Sonenreich said. “But then again, we’ve also been saying that since 2020. I suppose there might be more questions than answers in the macroeconomy at this time.”
