Last year, Greenfield-based HealthStar Partners paid $22.3 million for Elanco’s headquarters campus. It has since purchased an additional 10 vacant acres just north of that for more development. (IBJ photo/Chad Williams)
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As Elanco Animal Health Inc. settles into its new home in Indianapolis, leaders in Greenfield have turned their attention to the future of the company’s former corporate campus and how to use it as an anchor for future innovation.
Elanco opened the doors this month to its $200 million headquarters on the west side of downtown Indianapolis at the site of the former General Motors stamping plant. In Greenfield, a city of about 26,000 people that is 25 miles west of downtown Indianapolis, the company left a 20-acre campus with five connected buildings and 224,000 square feet of office and lab space.
Elanco, which focuses on producing medicines for pets and farm animals, spun off from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. in 2018. The company was the facility’s one-and-only tenant after it opened in 2010 at the northwest corner of the intersection of Interstate 70 and State Road 9.
While Elanco has a lease through mid-2027 for the campus about 3 miles north of downtown Greenfield in the Progress Park business and life sciences development, the campus’ future is in the hands of Greenfield- and Hancock County-based business and community leaders.
They envision a place that will serve as an anchor for a longer-term plan to turn a 6-mile stretch of rural State Road 9 heading north to East County Road 900 North into an agricultural technology and biosciences corridor called the State Road 9 Innovation Corridor.
“That north corridor could have so many possibilities for the future of our community because we still are an agricultural area,” Greenfield Mayor Guy Titus said. “Being the No. 2 fastest-growing county in the state [behind Boone County], we look at it as opportunity and great possibilities.”
Last year, HealthStar Partners, a collaboration of real estate and equity investment firm Pride Investment Partners LLC, independent health network Hancock Health and energy cooperative NineStar Connect, purchased the campus. The group paid $22.3 million to acquire the property from a subsidiary of Beverly Hills, California-based real estate investment firm Triumph Properties Group, according to Hancock County property records.
“I’m so glad that [HealthStar purchased the campus] because it kind of puts us in control of what could possibly go there,” Titus said. “That’s our gateway to our community.”
In August, HealthStar purchased an additional 10 vacant, developable acres north of the headquarters facility from Elanco for $1.4 million. A sixth building north of the campus is owned by Indianapolis-based Buckingham Cos.
Colleen Dekker, executive director for global corporate communications at Elanco, said the company “will continue to fulfill our lease obligations through the end of the term while our [research and development] operations wind down and fully transfer to Indianapolis.”
Stephanie White-Longworth, president of Pride Investment, said the group of three is interested in attracting companies that can bring high-paying jobs and support the overall vision for the future of the S.R. 9 corridor.
“The rest of [the campus] is all within our bucket now, so we’re able to look at the project as a whole,” she said.
Hancock Health, which operates a Greenfield hospital and a newer medical facility at Mount Comfort Road and I-70, plans to use about a quarter of the 15-year-old facility for medical offices and a new wellness center, said CEO Steve Long. The network has existing wellness centers in Greenfield, McCordsville and New Palestine.
But Long said Hancock Health’s plans could change if a single company comes forward with an attractive plan for the entire facility. The Indianapolis office of Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the property to potential tenants.
“If the right buyer came along and wanted the whole thing, then we would certainly make other arrangements for our secondary campus,” Long said.
In local hands
Greenfield has a long history in hosting pharmaceutical and health-related companies. In 1913, Lilly constructed the Lilly Biological Laboratories research and manufacturing plant on 150 acres in the city.
Elanco was based in Greenfield after Lilly established the company in 1954 and employed nearly 800 people at its Progress Park headquarters. Before moving to I-70 and S.R. 9, the company was about 5 miles away, near U.S. 40 and Meridian Road.
After Elanco announced in 2020 that it would relocate to Indianapolis, longtime friends Long and NineStar Connect CEO Michael Burrow began talking about how to ensure the campus would continue to serve the local community. It was a desire that Long said both Elanco and Triumph Properties Group shared.
“As you travel around the country, and even here in Indiana, you’re driving down the interstate and occasionally you will see a building that has turned into an antique mall or a fireworks stand that clearly was not intended for that,” Long said. “I’m joking a bit, but we did not want it to end up as something that would not be useful for our community.”
Long and Burrow determined they needed a third partner that was experienced in property development and management, so they contacted White-Longworth at Pride Investment.
White-Longworth and her brother Keith White formed Pride Investment after they sold the family’s GasAmerica Inc. business to Marathon Petroleum’s Speedway LLC in 2012.
Today, Pride Investment owns the burgeoning Leo’s Market and Eatery gasoline and restaurant chain that has locations in Greenfield, southeast Indianapolis, Lafayette, McCordsville and Noblesville, with additional stores in the works. It is also the primary investor for residential real estate projects, including the McCord Square apartment development in McCordsville.
Long said “they were looking for a local developer to partner with on the project, and we were kind of a logical fit,” White-Longworth said. “We just didn’t really want to see it go to an out-of-state developer and not be able to make sure it was good for right there where we’re at.”
Vision for the corridor
Most commercial development along I-70 in Hancock County has happened about 10 miles west of Progress Park where giants including Amazon and Walmart operate distribution and fulfillment centers. Titus said residents want a different type of development in Greenfield around the S.R. 9 exit.
“I don’t really want our part of Greenfield to be warehouses and so much industrial,” he said. “The possibilities we have up here with the agribusiness, agriscience. I know there are some pharmaceutical companies that have talked to our economic development team out here in Greenfield, and I think those are great possibilities for us.”
Greenfield and Hancock County leaders are working with Indianapolis-based OBE Advisors LLC, Indianapolis-based HWC Engineering and the Hancock Economic Development Council to create a plan that is expected to be finalized in the coming months for a 6-mile stretch of S.R. 9, north of the former Elanco campus. Much of the territory exists within a tax-increment financing district, which allows local governments to capture increased property tax revenue to fund improvements within a specific area.
Elanco’s departure provided the initiative to begin considering the future of the State Road 9 Innovation Corridor. A recent community survey found that most residents want agriculture to remain the primary industry along S.R. 9, which led leaders to examine how to use agriculture technology and bioscience as a pathway to future growth.
Mike Higbee, president of OBE Advisors, who works as a project consultant on the S.R. 9 corridor plan, said leaders are looking at the former Elanco facility and how it might serve as a catalyst for agriculture-related innovation, bioscience and technology industry in the area.
He also said a focus for the district is on preserving agricultural land east of S.R. 9, developing the unincorporated communities of Eden and Maxwell into rural mixed-use districts with dining, residential and lodging options and clustering agricultural innovation companies just north of the former Elanco campus along East County Road 300 North.
“S.R. 9 is a corridor that the county has identified as one that’s important to them, and it happens to be smack dab in where a lot of farming happens,” Higbee said. “And then with the Elanco facility, it seemed like some synergies were possible between that economic development strategy and what might happen to Elanco.”
Higbee cited Serenbe, Georgia, about 30 miles southwest of Atlanta, as an example of a rural community that has been master-planned around agriculture and preserving the natural landscape. About 700 of the Serenbe’s 1,000 acres are permanently protected green space.
“Open space, in our case, would be mostly farming, but also playing to the natural features that are out there and really kind of preserving, conserving, revering the open space long-haul. So you look at development practices that accommodate that,” he said.
Mitchell Kirk, communications director for the Hancock County Economic Development Council, said ideas along the corridor include mixed-use districts where workers could live with town centers featuring dining, lodging, trails and other quality-of-life elements.
“This strategy can’t be put into place overnight. Of course, it’s going to take time,” Kirk said. “And I think it’s important to be cognizant of the fact that the property owner, HealthStar Partners, is going to be responding to demand for that property, as they should, and we respect their business acumen and passion for the community.”
Burrow, with NineStar Connect, said his company has been encouraging enterprises that might need access to fields with nearby fiber-optic connection to look at the S.R. 9 corridor. He said NineStar has fiber optics installed on all the county roads on the eastern half of Hancock County, which allows for the use of technology such as real-time data censors, which are used by seed companies within crops.
He said securing the right tenant or tenants at the former Elanco campus would be a springboard for the rest of the S.R. 9 corridor.
“Elanco is a part of a bigger picture, a bigger hope, a bigger plan out here in Hancock County, if we can get all the puzzle pieces together,” Burrow said.
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