Massive $78 million warehouse nearly ready for Whirlpool

Sep 08, 2008 (The Columbus Dispatch - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- WHR | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Sep. 8--Wednesday was a great day for a barbecue near Rickenbacker Airport: blue skies, warm weather and the smell of freshly poured concrete in the air.

While burgers sizzled on a nearby grill, workers for Unlimited Concrete Solutions installed the last of 40,000 cubic yards of floor material at Whirlpool's massive new warehouse at Pizzuti Cos.' Rickenbacker West industrial park. The Benton Harbor, Mich., appliance maker plans to occupy the $78 million, 1.6 million-square-foot distribution center in November.

In an area where warehouses are commonplace, this is no common building. It's the second-largest industrial structure in the market, trailing only the Eddie Bauer warehouse.

"This is about two times the size of any normal distribution center project done in central Ohio," said Jim Miller, a Pizzuti Cos. vice president. "We were glad to get it."

The makeshift cookout was courtesy of Buckeye Ready-Mix, a Columbus company that supplied the floor material to Unlimited Concrete Solutions, which performed the concrete work.

And a lot of work it was: The floor of the Whirlpool warehouse could hold nearly 28 football fields. Starting in January, Buckeye Ready-Mix trucked about 4,000 mixer loads of concrete to the project site.

Set end to end, those trucks would stretch for 30 miles, said Unlimited Concrete project manager Todd Trigg.

The new space is expected to create 199 jobs and accommodate an additional 70 that will be moved from Whirlpool's Clyde, Ohio, plant. Whirlpool is moving many of the jobs from two buildings at CreekSide, Pizzuti's 500-acre business park that's adjacent to Rickenbacker West.

When Whirlpool moves into the new warehouse in November, construction work could soon hit a lull in the Rickenbacker area. Several speculative centers are about to be finished, which will boost available warehouse space at Rickenbacker to about 7 million square feet.

For example:

Pizzuti recently completed CreekSide 22, a 613,000-square-foot speculative warehouse just north of Rickenbacker West. It's putting the finishing touches on a nearby building that covers 254,000 square feet.

Kirco has a 702,000-square-foot warehouse nearby.

Duke Realty is nearing completion of a 936,000-square-foot spec warehouse.

Whirlpool is moving into its new facility from two of Pizzuti's existing buildings at CreekSide, and Pizzuti does not have tenants yet for that space.

"There are a lot of big boxes that are available in the submarket," said Robin Holderman, vice president of real estate for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority. "I would be surprised to see anybody else build a 1 million (square-foot) spec building in that market anytime in the near future."

Maybe not -- at least not that big. But Miller said that if Pizzuti can lease its CreekSide 22 building, it might begin work next year on a 649,000-square-foot building that it's calling CreekSide 9. The site sits next to the Norfolk & Southern railroad line that is key to development in the area.

The rail line is one of the more practical features of the Whirlpool site. Miller said Pizzuti spent $1 million to run the line into the south end of the warehouse, where Whirlpool will have the ability to unload seven rail cars at a time under cover.

"There are just not many rail-served sites that have a road to them in central Ohio," Miller said.

Whirlpool's new warehouse has 160 docks that can be accessed from both sides of the building. There are large staging areas inside and outside the warehouse: 80-foot-long, column-free indoor areas where Whirlpool workers assemble orders, and 757 outside holding areas for truck trailers.

The distribution center is actually two 800,000-square-foot warehouses linked by three passageways large enough to drive forklifts through. Miller said Whirlpool wanted the buildings configured that way -- end-to-end rather than side-by-side -- so the company could "operate it like one whole warehouse."

Pizzuti is marketing the remaining 94 acres at Rickenbacker West as build-to-suit sites, preferably to only two users. While Miller said the company is actively working on deals, those tenants have not yet surfaced and could be hard to attract with all the available space.

"The big question mark in the marketplace is how long that's going to take to absorb," Miller said. "Our market absorbs 1.5 million (square feet) a year to 5 to 6 million (square feet) a year.

"How quickly are we going to move to new developments?"

Mike Pramik covers development for The Dispatch. Contact him at mpramik@dispatch.com or by fax at 614-461-5107.

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