I lease my space.
Pros: If I decide I want something larger, smaller, or just different, I'm not stuck with a huge investment - I can just walk away after the lease is up (OK, it's a LOT more work than just walking away). Also, If the roof leaks, or the furnace breaks, etc, I call the landlord, who takes care of it. That makes the expenses easier to predict. I think the up-front expense is smaller also, as there was no down payment, just the shop set-up.
Cons: It's not yours, so you need permission to make major modifications. You have to be prepared to walk away from any large investment you make in improving the space when you do leave. And you build no equity.
Then there are the intangibles: You mentioned the appeal of a timber framed shop - this would certainly be a selling tool when you have prospective clients visit. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I could timber frame a 40 x 80 clear span space like I currently have.
I also have a 25 x 80 side bay for a total of 5000 sf. But I'm in the city with no outdoor storage, so only some of that space is used for cutting. The rest is for piles of cut and uncut timbers. In my opinion, 3200 sf is plenty big for a cutting floor, but I guess that depends on the size of your operation. I usually have 2 or 3 full time employees in addition to myself, so there are rarely more than 16-20 timbers on the cutting floor at a time.
Indoor timber storage has it's drawbacks besides the expense of a larger space. If you've got green timber in a cold climate, then the heat and low humidity indoors can dry the timber too rapidly in the winter, leading to excessive checking. I run a industrial humidifer at night to combat this (it's too loud to run during the day). It's actually a greenhouse fogger, and I have it pumping 2 gal/hour into the air when it's really dry. In the summer, you have the opposite problem. There's no breeze to dry them out to keep the fungus at bay. We set up big banks of box fans to create an indoor breeze, and keep the doors and windows open as much as possible. Proper stickering is crucial.
If I did have outdoor storage, I think 3-sided pole buildings would be excellent. I would investigate some sort of trolley system for bringing timbers in from the storage yard. You could set the timbers on the tolley car with the foklift, open the doors, roll the car into the shop, and then close the doors. If the top of the car were at sawhorse height, then you could roll/slide them around, and not have to lift them. These are not my ideas -- I once saw an outdoor shop with this kind of setup, and it worked really well for them. CB.
