Osceola Industries property at 1425 Ohlendorf Road in Osceola.
The bids didn’t materialize, so the city of Osceola will hang on to a former industrial site and lease it as warehouse and storage space.
The 586,948-SF Osceola Industries property, former home to Fruit of the Loom’s fleecewear plant, had a number of prospective buyers visit the site. But ultimately the interest didn’t materialize in the form of satisfactory bids, Mayor Sally Wilson said.
“We got one sale bid and it’s not going to be enough,” Wilson said late Friday. “But, ironically — I guess this is good — we have an additional prospect to rent more space as of today. Right now we probably have four new tenants for the building so I guess for the time being we’ll stay in the warehouse management game.”
The Osceola Industries facility, at 1425 Ohlendorf Road, was built in 1959 and saw its last major renovation, with asbestos removal, in 1989. It has been mostly vacant since Fruit of the Loom shut down in 2000-2001.
The city was hoping the property’s proximity to transportation infrastructure plus a lack of accessible warehouse space in the area would drive a buyer’s interest. The next best thing, Wilson said, was that tenants were lining up to lease space.
“They’re all related to existing industries in the area here,” Wilson said.
With agreements not yet finalized, Wilson wouldn’t comment on specific entities but said two tenants would be a company that supplies nearby Big River Steel as well as the company that is working on Big River’s $1.2 million, Phase II expansion.
In late March, Big River Steel announced it had commissioned SMS Group, based in Germany, to supply mechanical equipment, electrical and automation systems.
A deal for the Osceola Industries building would have had to include the shuttered plant for e-waste recycler BlueOak, located near the Osceola Industries Property on Ohlendorf Road. Wilson said before the bids were unsealed that that could be a possible complicating factor.
But the company buying BlueOak and as well as the company that is supplying the unnamed buyer are also prospective tenants, Wilson said.
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