By Mickey Shuey
Indiana Business Journal
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. says it’s keeping its options open for the sale of a large chunk of the former General Motors stamping plant site along the White River, after a summertime effort failed to secure a commitment for the property.
The IEDC issued a request for proposals on April 22 in hopes of selling its 51-acre site along the White River by the end of September, ideally to a master developer that would oversee complete development of the site through its own projects and other partnerships. The amount of available land now is 45 acres.
The IEDC bought the 91-acre stamping plant site in 2020 for $25.5 million from Ambrose Property Group and transferred 13 acres to Elanco Animal Health Inc. to develop a new corporate headquarters, which now is under construction. Elanco intends to purchase an additional 12 acres to the north by March.
Mark Wasky, senior vice president and special counsel to the Secretary of Commerce, told IBJ last week that the request for proposals “generated a pretty significant amount of interest in the property,” but none of the formal and informal responses from local and national developers met all of the IEDC’s expectations.
Wasky declined to disclose the asking price for the land, but he said it was an obstacle for developers.
Economic development leaders want the 45 acres to be developed as the OneHealth Innovation District—a partnership between Elanco, Purdue University and the Indiana Economic Development Corp.—for research in human, animal and plant health sciences. Elanco’s headquarters would be the anchor of the district.
That could include biotech and life sciences offices, research facilities and even production. Or it could mean collaborative research or joint projects between companies and universities.
Already, Purdue, Elanco and the IEDC have agreed to develop a shared-use facility on 3 acres near the Elanco building. The facility will include office, wet lab and incubator space.
Wasky said the state is continuing to discuss potential land sales with “a number of firms,” noting that the IEDC is “keeping our options open” until a deal is finalized. He said the entirety of the available land would likely not be purchased by a single entity, but be split among two or more firms that would develop individual sites based on agreements with the agency.
IEDC officials said the agency has spent about $76 million on infrastructure and site development since acquiring the former stamping plant site. That work has included the removal of a large concrete pad, as well as construction of new roads and sidewalks that is underway.
“Obviously, we’re trying to recoup as much of the original purchase price as possible with the investment that we made,” said Wasky. “We are thinking about ways that we can further recoup the overall costs, maybe a little bit longer term, but a way to make sure that the state is, at a minimum, made whole. Some of that is going to be indirect, maybe not in the value of the land, but in the value of the activity and the wages that are getting paid by employers.”
Wasky said the uncertainty around the future of the long-proposed Eleven Park project on the opposite bank of the White River, a $1.5 billion development that had been expected to feature a 20,000-seat soccer stadium, has affected the available stamping plant land.
Wasky said the limbo of Eleven Park hasn’t necessarily dimmed interest in the GM stamping plant site, but he noted that appraisals for the property were done with the mixed-use development on the east side of the river in mind.
Construction on the $43 million Henry Street Bridge project connecting the stamping plant site to the southwest quadrant of downtown is expected to begin this week. But it remains unclear whether Indianapolis-based Keystone Group will move ahead with plans to complete excavation of the Diamond Chain site where Eleven Park had been intended to go.
The city earlier this year said it was moving ahead with an alternative site for a soccer stadium.
Correction: The amount of acreage that Elanco Animal Health Inc. now possesses for its headquarters project is 13 acres, and it has plans to take another 12 acres on the former stamping plant site. The original version of this story said that Elanco had 45 acres on the site. You can see all of our corrections here.
