Pre-planning is absolutely essential. The history of our industry is full of retailers who found themselves stuck with sites that did not even meet minimal requirements. An architect once told me there are 2,200 decisions and choices to be made when building a facility. Individual factor importance ranking may differ among retailers but all are important. After these are resolved, the remaining decisions are easier.
Some sites require armed guards while others are safe virtually all the time.
The building can be a landmark that even may be nicely lighted during evening and early morning hours as inexpensive advertising. Verify that the trucks can easily get from the major highways to the warehouse. This might appear to be an oxymoron because if over the road trucks have easy access, access will be easy for furniture delivery trucks. The issue here is to locate the warehouse to serve both current and future customers. Using sales records, generate a delivery profile and a color coded map by zip codes or community name in rural areas.