Renovations breathe life
Vacant buildings earn 2nd chance as offices, plants
Next month, when Messer Commercial Builders LLC moves into the building it bought, the president says there’ll be no sign that it was once a manufacturing company and sat empty for years.
“When we purchased the building, it was a vacant, under-utilized eyesore,” said Edward Messer, president of Messer Commercial. “When we are finished with the renovations, it will be inside and out a new building.”
The commercial contracting company is updating the building’s façade, replacing the electrical system, erecting new walls, installing new cabinetry and flooring.
Most companies that buy vacant, older buildings customize them through remodeling, said Galen Eberhart, executive director of the DeKalb County Economic Development Partnership Inc.
Messer Commercial, a general contracting company, leases a 500-square-foot office in downtown Auburn, but in June bought a 2,600-square-foot building on a two-acre site at 1108 Auburn Drive. The property includes three outside storage buildings. The company expects to move into the new site by the end of November, Messer said.
“The amount of land I was able to get with it and the accessory buildings, … combined with the purchase price I was able to negotiate made a lot of sense to me,” Messer said. While he would not disclose the exact price, Messer said the company paid less than $150,000 for the property.
Even including the cost of renovation, moving into an older building allowed the company to get more land and a larger building than constructing something new, Messer said. With the additional space, Messer said his current staff of five could increase to seven or nine next year.
Older industrial structures are difficult to market because the building’s specifications are often functionally obsolete, said Bill Konyha, president and chief executive of the Economic Development Group of Wabash County. Konyha said most of the older, vacant manufacturing buildings in Wabash County have 10- to 12-foot ceilings. But companies that practice just-in-time manufacturing want to be able to store their product until it is ordered from a customer and want 30- to 34-foot ceilings.
Wabash recently had a 145,000-square-foot vacant building at 200 Bond St. bought by Novi, Mich.-based Living Essentials Inc. On Sept. 5, the manufacturer of 5 Hour Energy Drink announced it would invest $2.5 million in equipment to turn the site into a testing lab, packaging assembly and distribution center. Production was scheduled to begin this month, but officials at Living Essentials did not return requests for comment. The statement said Living Essentials would bring 36 jobs to Wabash.
The company needed a large building to accommodate several operations and can work in the building despite the 10- or 12-foot ceilings, Konyha said. This is the first company within the past several years to locate into an older, vacant building in Wabash.
“This was a unique situation,” Konyha said.
In addition to functional problems, there are other obstacles in marketing older buildings.
Konyha said some economic development incentives, such as tax abatements, do not apply to existing buildings but only to new structures, so that can be a disadvantage.
But businesses get some advantages moving into an existing building rather than a new one, Konyha said. For example, the permitting and zoning is already completed, freeing the company from those tasks. And it is usually more economical to move into an existing building.
“(Companies) want to get a building ready to go as quickly and economically as possible,” Konyha said.
Eberhart in DeKalb County said that having different kinds of buildings available is an important tool for economic development officials. When companies want to move, they have specific needs, which might include building size, ceiling requirements or proximity to the highway or rail, Eberhart said.
“You just have to find the right kind of business looking for the right kind of space,” Eberhart said. “It just takes the right project.”
kpeterson@jg.net
