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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA central Indiana city is looking to sell the factory that a failed solar panel manufacturer bought with hundreds of thousands of dollars in public subsidies.
Columbus officials will start accepting bids next month for the vacant Nusun Inc. facility in a city industrial park. City attorney Jeff Logston said officials hope to get at least $575,000 for the warehouse and office building.
That would make up for most of the $800,000 or so in subsidies that local governments gave to help Nusun open in 2011, The Republic reported.
When it announced it was moving from Muncie to Columbus in 2010, Nuson said it planned to spend $9 million to start production. It's goal was to have 80 employees by 2012 and 240 by 2014.
Nusun only had 17 employees by August 2013 and gave the facility back to the city in December. Nusun CEO Ryan Stout blamed the company's troubles on Chinese companies flooding the market with solar panels at artificially low prices.
Nusun also was offered up to $2.25 million in performance-based tax credits by the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
The company was founded in 2009 by Ryan Stout, former vice president of operations at Yorktown-based BatteryXpress.
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