FT. WAYNE, IN—The US auto industry continues to rebound, and that's good news for the owners of industrial spaces. A specialty automotive parts and assembly company, for example, has just leased 764,000 square feet at 2909 Pleasant Center Rd. in Fort Wayne, IN, a city in the northeast corner of the state. The building has been vacant since late last year, after General Mills outgrew the space.
"We had a ton of demand from tenants looking for between 100,000 square feet and 200,000 square feet," JLL executive vice president Brian Seitz tells GlobeSt.com, but the building is better-suited for large users. Seitz and JLL's Steve Schwegman, both based in Indianapolis, represented the building owner, Phoenix-based VEREIT, in the transaction. The tenant was represented by Greg Pink of the Bradley Cos. in South Bend, IN.
The tenant will use the space to store car bodies, which it will then assemble at its production facility in Mishawaka, IN. The cars will then be shipped to China for sale.
“This facility will allow the new tenant to continue expanding its warehouse inventory to be used in the manufacturing process, servicing its customers efficiently,” Schwegman says.
The building was built in 1994 and is the former Nestle distribution center. It was designed with specialized food-grade mechanicals, including 8,400 square feet of cooler space. The facility, which also includes 17,725 square feet of office space, is expandable to more than one million square feet.
"The auto industry in the northeast part of the state has definitely come back," Seitz adds. "And that means there is a healthy number of industrial tenants in the region."
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
