EVANSVILLE, IN—The Midwest has many towns filled with abandoned industrial sites that once anchored their economies. Evansville, Indiana seemed set to join them when the Whirlpool Corp. left its 1.2-million-square-foot manufacturing facility here in 2010. But local developer Ben Kunkel saw something in the WWII-era structure and bought it for less that $3 million in 2011. Since then he has leased over 1-million-square-feet of space.

Kunkel converted the hulking, single-tenant building into a multi-tenant industrial complex with the following tenant roster:

• GAF Roofing

• SRG Automotive

• Sugar Steel

• Flanders Electric

• Cross Point Polymer Technologies

• Park 41 Logistics

• The Kunkel Group

And Benjamin L. Kadish, president of Maverick Commercial Mortgage, Inc. says his firm funded a $12,000,000 loan on the property, providing the acquisition financing for the purchase and mezzanine financing for the tenant improvements and conversion to a multi-tenant property. Improvements included demising walls, offices, new entrances, new truck docks, trailer docks, overhead doors and a good deal of demolition and scrapping of the old interior. The property has new utilities including modern green technology for lighting and HVAC.

Kunkel, for example, was able to provide indoor loading and unloading to GAF Roofing by creating a driveway through the warehouse by adding massive overhead doors to both sides of the property. This allowed GAF to commit to 350,000-square-feet inside, and close to 500,000-square-feet of exterior storage, to serve their manufacturing operations located 30 miles from Evansville.

Kunkel did the majority of the property improvements and also handles the leasing and management. This is the largest developer-owned property in Evansville and now has more than 200 employees working in the once-abandoned facility.

The lender was represented by Kaye Scholer LLP and the borrower was represented by Krista Lockyear of Rudolph, Fine, Porter & Johnson and Shawn Sullivan of Terell, Baugh, Salmon and Born LLP.