Shallow Bay
An industrial building with a shorter front-to-back depth, usually 100-150 feet, than a big-box distribution building built for deep racking.
Definition
Shallow bay describes a building's depth, the distance from the front wall to the rear wall, rather than the spacing between structural columns (see bay size). Shallow bay buildings typically run 100 to 150 feet deep, compared to 300 feet or more in big-box distribution centers designed for deep pallet racking and cross-docking. The shorter depth suits multi-tenant subdivision: each unit gets workable frontage and a usable footprint without the wasted interior area that only a large single-tenant user can absorb. Shallow bay is used alongside small bay and flex to describe the same class of property, though the terms describe different attributes: shallow bay refers to depth, small bay usually refers to unit size, and bay size refers to column spacing.
Example
A shallow bay building runs 120 feet deep and 400 feet wide, divided into 16 units of 3,000 SF each on 25-foot bay spacing. A big-box building on the adjacent parcel runs 500 feet deep, built for a single tenant running deep pallet racking that would not fit a shallow bay footprint.