MUNCIE, Ind. — Shell buildings, built on spec and meant to attract employers to the community, have no vacancies in Delaware County right now. The county redevelopment commission might change that soon.

Brad Bookout, Delaware County economic development director, told The Star Press this week that the commission had not made a decision but was considering construction of a new shell building in the Industria Centre industrial park along Cowan Road, just south of Muncie.

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The county has built nine shell buildings in the past, and all have been occupied or purchased. Most recently, Living Greens farm, a vertical farming company based in Minnesota, announced plans to use a 200,000-square-foot shell building built by the county to produce bagged salad. The work inside the building is expected to equal the production of 2 million acres of farmland when the operation gets going in 2023, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. That shell building had stood empty since 2014.

Bookout said that shell buildings attract the attention of economic developers and companies looking for a site to locate. They can help put a community on a company's radar, even if the shell building is not eventually chosen as the facility a business uses.

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"If we don't have a shell building, what do we have to show people? … A cornfield? Everybody's got a cornfield," Bookout said. 

He said INOX, the Italian-based stainless steel forming company, first came to Muncie to look at the shell building Living Greens Farm is moving into. INOX decided it couldn't use the shell building but liked the community and decided to come to Muncie and build its own 139,800-square-foot facility.

Bookout said he expects the next shell building to be smaller that the one constructed in 2014. He and county attorney John Brooke have been assigned the task of researching what sort of structure is most likely to meet current needs of an employer, be it a logistics operation, a manufacturing plant or some other commercial enterprise.

The economic development director said any shell building built now would likely feature multiple truck loading docks.

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The shell building being use by Living Greens Farm cost about $8 million to build.  Bookout stressed that no decision to build a new another has been made by the commission yet.

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David Penticuff is the local government reporter at the Star Press. Contact him at dpenticuff@gannett.com.