The long quest to find a new owner for the old Modine Manufacturing property is complete, with two Emporia businessmen factoring prominently in the ownership team.
Elvis Lindquist said he’s one of three new owners of the property after the deal closed on Monday to purchase it from Proliance International. The other owners are Steven Lanier of Augusta, whom Lindquist has been in business with for about 10 years, and the company Sunflower LLC.
David Jamison, who has been the spokesperson at city and county action meetings for the potential sale of the property, is a spokesman for Sunflower, Lindquist said. He also is the spokesman and manager for Ress Properties, which will operate out of the building and focus on freight distribution. Lindquist and Lanier are also members of Ress. In December, Ress submitted the application to rezone the property at 1401 Industrial Road for industrial use.
“We will do any necessary repairs in the building and get it up to operations — cleaning up the facility and the landscaping out front, making some curb appeal to it,” Lindquist said. “We plan to do that in all aspects of the building.”
In January, Jamison told the Emporia-Lyon County Metropolitan Area Planning Commission that the prospective owners planned to use the property for freight storage and distribution, but manufacturing companies had inquired about leasing space in the facility. Lindquist confirmed that on Tuesday, indicating that Ress Properties would handle the distribution side of things, while Sunflower would be focused on leasing space to interested companies.
“We’ve had a lot of companies within the city of Emporia contact us for warehousing,” Lindquist said.
Lindquist and Lanier are partners in Lanier Transportation and Logistics, which Lindquist said also will operate out of the property. The company specializes in overnight delivery service and has warehouses in Denver, Dodge City, Emporia, Hays, Kansas City and Salina. Lindquist said the Lanier company would be operating out of the Industrial Road facility within 30 days. He said the goal was to employ 30 to 50 people at the warehouse.
Lindquist said he didn’t want to reveal the closing price on the 13-acre property.
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Posted by wanderer (anonymous) on March 13, 2008 at 1:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)
So after all this time, the Modine building finally has a tenant. Talk about coming in the nick of time. It won't stretch to 1,500 people, but every little bit helps.
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