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Shop Stories · S01

From dirt to doors: Somersworth goes vertical.

Three buildings, one hill on the New Hampshire Seacoast. The first episode of Shop Stories follows our Somersworth park from graded dirt to standing steel, the unglamorous middle of how a flex park actually gets built.

The Shop Manual editorial teamUpdated August 2026Filmed fall 2024 · 6 min watch + read
Fall 2024: the pass over all three buildings with steel up and siding going on. Tap fullscreen to fly it big. A lot has happened since this flight, see the update below.

Most real estate marketing shows you the finished thing: clean aprons, straight lines, a blue-sky drone orbit. Shop Stories is the other footage, the part where it's mud, steel, and schedule. We're starting the series at 18 Patriot Way in Somersworth, New Hampshire, because it's the park that taught us the most, and because we had a drone in the air while it happened.

01Why this hill

Somersworth sits in the working heart of the Seacoast, fifteen minutes to Dover, Rochester, and the Maine line, in a town that still zones for people who make and fix things. The site gave us what small-bay businesses actually price: highway access without highway rent, room for real aprons (a bay with a great door and no turning room is a storage unit with ambitions), and a trade population, contractors, fabricators, detailers, movers, renting garages and basements within twenty minutes in every direction. We didn't invent demand here. We built it an address.

The wide look, fall 2024: three buildings stepped along the grade, aprons poured, the door pattern already legible from altitude.

02Three buildings, one idea

The design focused on workspace for small businesses, with bays in the 800 to 3,200 square-foot range and potential combinations to discuss with the Welcome Team. Before planning racking, a lift or a mezzanine, confirm the specific bay’s dimensions, clear height to the lowest obstruction, slab, power and required approvals. Any future expansion depends on available space and agreed lease terms.

A lower pass along the bay doors, fall 2024. The rhythm you're seeing, door, panel, door, panel, is the product.

03What's happened since this footage

Honesty note, because this series will always carry one: everything above was filmed in fall 2024, and the park has moved on without the camera. The buildings are complete and partners have moved in. Somersworth’s bays are on its facility page: ask the Welcome Team for current availability and One United Price.

The doors that were mud eighteen months before. Somersworth's current availability lives on the facility page.

“We didn't invent demand here. We built it an address.”

See Somersworth's bays The park in this film, today. Ask the Welcome Team about availability, pricing and tours.