Developer building big spec warehouse in Westfield

A Carmel-based firm hopes to take advantage of Westfield's new allure for industrial development with a warehouse project expected to break ground this spring.

Dubbed Westfield Business Centre, the 133,000-square-foot building—a little bigger than two football fields—is slated for 17001-17075 Oak Ridge Road, southwest of the intersection of U.S. 31 and State Road 32. The site is north of Indiana Brick Co. and west of material-handling supplier Storage Solutions.

The Peterson Co., an Indianapolis-based contractor with expertise in building large warehouses, is the general contractor for project developer Oak Ridge Road LLC, an affiliate of Carmel-based Jackson Development LLC. The project is being constructed as a spec building, which typically means no end users have been signed yet for some or all of the structure.

"Westfield is now a competitive industrial sub-market due to the U.S. 31 [construction project] being complete," Peterson Chief Operating Officer Larry Siegler told IBJ. "Transportation and access are always at the top of a prospect’s list."

The building will include truck cargo bays and three separate entrances. It’s designed to accommodate a variety of business uses and up to five tenants, depending on market demand, Siegler said.

If all goes according to schedule, Siegler said, the facility will be ready for occupancy this fall.

Officials with Jackson Development could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

Peterson is also preparing to start work soon on a separate project a little farther north in Westfield.

That will be a 91,000-square-foot manufacturing site for Bastian Solutions, which makes automation products for the material-handling industry. Bastian, which was acquired by Japan-based Toyota Industries Corp. in February 2017, announced the Westfield project last fall. It intends to spend $8 million to build the factory east of U.S. 31 near 196th Street., and to employ 87 workers by the end of 2020.

Peterson has a lot of experience in warehouse and industrial construction.

In recent years, Siegler said, the company has built more than a dozen warehouses, industrial shell buildings, manufacturing/distribution facilities and similar projects locally.

Those projects include numerous warehouses within Indianapolis’ Park 100 industrial park;  a 66,000-square-foot freezer/cooler facility in Whitestown for CSL Plasma; and numerous other projects in Indianapolis, Whitestown, Mount Comfort, Greenwood, Plainfield and Columbus.