MUNCIE — Shell buildings, built on spec and meant to attract employers to the community, have no vacancies in Delaware County right now. The county redevelopment commission might change that soon.
Brad Bookout, Delaware County economic development director, told The Star Press this week that the commission had not made a decision but was considering construction of a new shell building in the Industria Centre industrial park along Cowan Road, just south of Muncie.
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The county has built nine shell buildings in the past, and all have been occupied or purchased. Most recently, Living Greens farm, a vertical farming company based in Minnesota, announced plans to use a 200,000-square-foot shell building built by the county to produce bagged salad. The work inside the building is expected to equal the production of 2 million acres of farmland when the operation gets going in 2023, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. That shell building had stood empty since 2014.
Bookout said that shell buildings attract the attention of economic developers and companies looking for a site to locate. They can help put a community on a company's radar, even if the shell building is not eventually chosen as the facility a business uses.
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"If we don't have a shell building, what do we have to show people? … A cornfield? Everybody's got a cornfield," Bookout said.