Over the last three weeks,Tony Beasley has been reminded of what it's like to be the cool kid at school with a shiny new toy.
After ConAgra announced it would donate its Slim Jim factory and 106 acres along Interstate 40 to Garner, Beasley, the town's economic development director, suddenly became every commercial real estate broker's best friend.
"You've got every broker, just about, that's a national, multinational broker calling," Beasley said this week. "It's like 'Hey, hey, hey, pick me, pick me, pick me.' "
That Garner is months away from making any decisions about what to do with its windfall hasn't stopped brokers and land developers from pitching their services.
"They're all saying the same thing," Beasley said. "We have a food-processing niche!"
What ultimately ends up happening with the ConAgra plant and the surrounding land could have major implications for the economic development of Garner and southern Wake County.
"It's truly a unique situation in the economic development world," Beasley said.
The land, which has a tax value of $8.3 million, is off I-40, about a mile from its intersection with U.S. 70.
It includes two tracts, one on each side of the interstate. The larger track, on the west side, is 94 acres, with about 25 acres taken up by the Slim Jim plant, parking, a water treatment plant and stormwater ponds.
ConAgra plans to operate the Slim Jim plant until July or August of next year. After that, the company will remove any proprietary equipment and demolish sections that were damaged in the explosion in June.
The company expects to turn over the facility and the land to Garner by Jan. 1, 2012.
The delay gives Garner time to come up with a plan and will give demand for industrial space a chance to rebound.
The warehouse vacancy rate in southern Wake County was 20.6 percent in late December, up from 14 percent a year earlier, and six points higher than the Triangle vacancy rate, Karnes Research data show.
The ConAgra land is near the 120,000-square-foot Greenfield North business park, which opened in 2005 and is now 86 percent occupied, according to a Highwoods Properties survey.
In the catbird seat
Over several months, Garner officials will study the property to see how it might be put to use. ConAgra is giving Garner $3 million to build a community center; the town will use $500,000 of that to study and market the tract on Jones Sausage Road.
Garner could make the plant the centerpiece of a new industrial park, carve it into parcels, sell the site to a developer, partner with a developer, or even keep it and lease the land to one or more tenants.
Because the plant was the site of an explosion that killed four workers, the first thing prospective tenants are likely to ask is whether the plant has environmental problems that would complicate development.
Beasley said ConAgra has conducted one environmental study and has promised to do a second one to make sure the site is free of hazardous material and is tenant-ready when it departs.
Many assume another food processing company will replace ConAgra, but Garner officials and Ken Atkins, Wake County's economic development director, say the facility could appeal to biopharmaceutical companies. Beasley noted that the Slim Jim plant is certified by the Food and Drug Administration and includes features such as washable walls.
"There are things that are already in place that drastically reduce the up-fit cost for somebody coming in that needs to be FDA certified," he said.
ConAgra is allowing Garner to give tours of the plant to prospective tenants, one of which was a site selection team that specializes in biopharmaceutical companies.
ConAgra was once Garner's largest private employer, and the town would like to see the property become a major jobs center.
That means it's less likely to be used for something like a data center, which is capital-intensive but wouldn't create many jobs. Fidelity Investments of Boston is considering Garner for a new $60 million data center.
Beasley isn't ruling out the possibility that the property could even include some five- or six-story Class A office buildings along I-40.
"If we're going to wish," he said, "we're going to wish big."
As for Beasley's new commercial real estate friends, he hopes to find work for asmany as possible.
"My ultimate goal would be to have individual tracts to be listed with different brokers," he said.
