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Subaru of America Inc. plans to open a parts distribution facility at a proposed 1.1-million-square-foot warehouse in Zionsville, just across the border from Whitestown.
The warehouse, called Park 267, would be built on 76 acres at the northwest corner of State Road 267 and County Road 550 South in Perry Township.
Matt Price, an attorney representing developers San Francisco-based Prologis Inc. and Indianapolis-based Browning Ventures LLC, told the Zionsville Plan Commission on June 20 that the project is unlike many other warehouse developments along the Interstate 65 corridor that are built on a speculative basis.
The plan commission voted 6-0 to approve a development plan for the property.
“This particular property was part of a competitive proposal to secure Subaru as the tenant and so that company is going to be subject to approval, obviously, seeking to expand its footprint here in Indiana and in particular here in Boone County,” Price said. “So, it’s a very exciting opportunity and one that is not speculative in nature.”
About 130 employees would work at the facility, according to town documents. A price tag for the warehouse was not available, nor was a timeline for its construction if it’s approved.
A Subaru spokesperson did not respond to a message with questions from IBJ.
“The intent of this building is largely a distribution warehouse, so it’s parts that are going to be on racks, basically, inside the facility,” Bryan Sheward, a civil engineer at the Indianapolis office of Raleigh, North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn, told the plan commission.
In 2020, Prologis proposed a $50 million project with two 550,000-square-foot warehouses at State Road 267 and County Road 550 South. Now, the project calls for a single 1.1-million-square-foot facility that would be 41 feet in height with space for 351 automobile parking spaces and 100 trailer parking spaces.
Parking could be expanded in the future to allow for up to 132 additional automobile spaces and 140 more trailer spaces.
Indianapolis-based architecture firm CSO is managing the design of the facility.
The land was rezoned in 2020 from agricultural to rural light industrial. Price said the warehouse project was put on hold early in the pandemic.
The warehouse is planned in an area of Boone County with a contentious recent past.
In 2014, Zionsville merged with Perry Township using the Government Modernization Act, and Whitestown immediately filed suit to claim the area for itself. After a local court struck down the reorganization, the case ultimately went to the Indiana Supreme Court, and that body decided to uphold the merger.
More than 6,000 people work at Subaru of Indiana Automotive’s 4.7-million-square-foot facility in Lafayette where the company produces about 410,000 vehicles each year. Employees at the facility, which is Tokyo-based Subaru Corp.’s only U.S. assembly plant, produce the Ascent, Crosstrek, Legacy and Outback.
The Lafayette plant, which started production in 1989, was the first Japanese auto plant in Indiana. In May, the plant ceased producing the Impreza and began manufacturing the Crosstrek.
Subaru of America operates a 715,000-square-foot distribution facility at Prologis Park Lebanon on a 56-acre property east of Interstate 65.
On June 1, Subaru of America reported 10 consecutive months of yearly month-over-month growth. The company sold 54,531 vehicles in May, a 28.2% increase compared with May 2022. It also reported year-to-date sales of 248,924, a 12.8% increase compared with the same period in 2022.
Prologis ranks first on IBJ’s latest list of the largest Indianapolis-area commercial real estate developers, with more than 68.2 million square feet of industrial warehouse space. It has a 500,000-square-foot warehouse less than a mile away from the Perry Township site, at 5300 Performance Way in Whitestown.
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