Pictured: Elanco Animal Health opened its world headquarters in Progress Park in Greenfield in 2010. DAILY REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Pictured: Elanco Animal Health opened its world headquarters in Progress Park in Greenfield in 2010. DAILY REPORTER FILE PHOTO
GREENFIELD — The departure of Elanco Animal Health’s global headquarters in the coming years will leave hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate to fill.

Amid the surprise and disappointment over the company’s announcement Friday, officials also expressed confidence over the site’s future.

Elanco has been based at Progress Park since 2010, spread out in six buildings on more than 32 acres in a location highly visible from Interstate 70. Before that, it was based on the campus of Eli Lilly and Co’s Greenfield Laboratories on West Main Street.

Colleen Dekker, a spokeswoman for Elanco, told the Daily Reporter in an email that the company’s buildings total about 250,000 square feet. They house research and development laboratories along with corporate functions like finance, human resources, marketing, information technology and commercial leadership.

Dekker said Elanco is committed to helping Greenfield move forward.

“We’ll be working with state and local leaders over the next few years to find a new tenant for our Greenfield campus,” she said. “Ensuring a smooth transition is very important to us.”

Randy Sorrell, executive director of the Hancock Economic Development Council, said he’s confident an occupant or occupants will be able to be secured for Elanco’s Greenfield property after the company leaves.

“With the requests for information we get for parcels of real estate, I see no problem whatsoever with filling that space,” Sorrell said. “Progress Park is a very nice commercial, light-industrial park. We’ve had great success there. It’s right off I-70. We get calls about that weekly, so I don’t see that as a detriment to our economic development attraction efforts.”

Steve Long, president and CEO of Hancock Regional Hospital and a member and past chair of the Hancock Economic Development Council board of directors, called Elanco’s future departure a “mixed blessing.”

“It’s not good that they’re leaving; however, it’s an extraordinary asset that’s sitting out there,” Long said, adding he has no doubt the property will fill up with companies that may be just as good or even better for the area.

Long expects all of the investments being made throughout Hancock County will be a draw for the Elanco site. Large buildings are being developed in the western part of the county; plans for housing developments have been announced throughout 2020, and even the hospital itself has been working to draw commercial developments to I-70 and Mt. Comfort Road as well as in New Palestine.

“This will, I think, be fairly rapidly identified with all of this expansion,” Long said of the Elanco site. “I don’t anticipate it’ll sit vacant for years and years.”

The county’s future remains bright despite the upcoming major change, he continued.

“This will just be one of those hiccups that come along and then we move past it,” he said.

Greenfield City Council president Kerry Grass said the city will hopefully be able to use the two to three years while the new headquarters is being constructed and relocation is taking place to find a new occupant for the Greenfield Elanco campus. If the city could find a large company that would offer an equal number of jobs for a similar level of pay, he said, there would not be a net loss to the city.

“I’m sure the city will be looking to fill that space as soon as possible,” he said.

Greenfield mayor Chuck Fewell said the state government has been proactive in offering to help Greenfield find a new occupant for the site.

Fewell said he thinks the city will be able to recruit another business for the location. The situation of a company conducting a nationwide search for a new headquarters is an unusual one, he said; Greenfield’s incentives package would likely be attractive to other companies, and the space currently occupied by Elanco is large enough that it could be divided between multiple entities.

Hancock County Council members Jim Shelby and Bill Bolander said the county government will work with the city to help find a new tenant for the headquarters facility.
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