INDIANAPOLIS—Few cities in the US have seen more expansion in their distribution sector than Indianapolis. And the Ford Motor Co. has become the latest to take advantage of this metro area's strategic location and set of modern facilities. The Opus Group has just gotten a contract to complete a set of improvements to a portion of Airwest Building 9, at the Plainfield Business Center in suburban Plainfield, which the car company will occupy this August.
“Plainfield Business Center is in a prime location and offers ideal space for an automotive manufacturer,” Manish Gandhi, director of project management of Opus Design Build, LLC, tells GlobeSt.com. Located north of I-70 and near the Indianapolis International Airport, Ford will use its new 280,000 space as a distribution center for automotive parts. Opus will add new shipping and receiving capabilities, build office space, and upgrade electrical systems, lighting and ventilation.
Opus has been one of the more active developers in the region. It developed the 482,308-square-foot Airwest 9 and recently launched Airwest 12 and Airwest 13, two speculative warehouses with a total of 924,530-square-feet. Each will have 36' clear ceiling heights, T5 lighting and 45 to 48 docking spaces.
By this March, developers in Indianapolis had 11 buildings, which will total about 6.5-million-square-feet, either under construction or in the planning stages, according to JLL. And the average vacancy rate for bulk distribution space throughout the Indianapolis market was 6.1% at the end of 2013.
Opus companies have developed 13 industrial buildings in the Plainfield Business Center as well as two additional build-to-suit industrial projects in the Indianapolis market totaling 6.8-million-square-feet. The firm will complete that project in spring 2014.
“We've got some active prospects and have had a number of showings,” says Gandhi. “We're seeing a lot of general distribution activity.”
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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.
