A groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday at Bellefontaine’s Peak Industrial Park on Progress Way. Marker Development LLC, an affiliate of Marker, Inc., broke ground on 200,000 square feet of new speculative construction at Peak Industrial Park in Bellefontaine, Ohio, investing more than $14 million. The development will be comprised of two new 100,000-square-foot institutional-grade speculative buildings.
Bellefontaine Mayor Ben Stahler commented on the addition:
“Our family has been operating in the Logan County and Columbus Region for three generations and more than 65 years, so we are honored to be impacting Logan County’s growth with this new development,” said Marker Development President and General Counsel Kirk Marker. “We would like to thank JobsOhio and our longtime local partners for the support to move the project forward and for working tirelessly with us to make Logan County a hot spot for new and expanding industrial operations.”
These institutional-grade facilities will set a new standard for Peak Industrial Park and be an attractive option for major employers in the manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution sectors. These two industrial flex buildings will be supported by complete utility and road infrastructure to serve 110 industrial-zoned acres. The project will provide a Class A hard wall structure in the Logan County market, where lease rates have historically not supported a structure of this quality. With the help of JobsOhio’s Ohio Site Inventory Program (OSIP) grant, Marker Development is constructing Logan County’s first industrial speculative development project in more than a decade.
“This investment in Bellefontaine will establish Logan County’s first speculative site with assistance from JobsOhio and its partners,” said Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. “When complete, the Peak Industrial Park will be an ideal destination for businesses to rapidly establish new operations and create hundreds of new jobs for Ohioans.”
In 2020, the Logan County Chamber of Commerce, City of Bellefontaine, Logan County officials, and Marker unveiled Peak Industrial Park, a 110-acre industrial park created to increase the availability of shovel-ready industrial land and speculative industrial buildings for new and expanding businesses. To fulfill Ohio’s need for speculative site inventory, JobsOhio also launched the Ohio Site Inventory Program in 2020, offering grants and low-interest loans to support projects with no identified end-user. The OSIP grant funds are a vital component of the capital stack for Marker’s new construction, assisting to close the funding gap for this project and adding inventory to a submarket that has maintained a historically low vacancy of less than 1% for more than five years.
“Marker’s development will help Logan County tackle a challenge that has faced our community for more than a decade,” said Logan County Chamber of Commerce & Community Improvement Corporate President Ben Vollrath. “This groundbreaking is a milestone event for our business community, so we are appreciative of Marker’s community-minded vision as well as the support offered by the OSIP program to bring this project to fruition.”
“The Peak Industrial Park in Bellefontaine is exactly what we had in mind when launching speculative development assistance,” said JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef. “Logan County is gaining a new edge in attracting businesses to the area as Ohio and our communities continue to aggressively pursue proactive and reactive site selection projects.”
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