By Marty Finley Reporter, Louisville Business First
Updated
Louisville developer Steve Poe continues to delve further into the industrial sector.
Poe’s firm, Poe Cos., proposed a plan late last week for the construction of around 850,000 square feet of space on nearly 80 undeveloped acres at 5013 Camp Ground Road and some surrounding properties in Southwest Louisville.
The development would house both office and warehouse space and be divided among multiple buildings. Two of the buildings are just under 200,000 square feet while the other two exceed 200,000 square feet, according to a site plan filed with the city. The largest building proposed is nearly 240,000 square feet, the plans show.
Hank Hillebrand, director of development for Poe Cos., said by phone Tuesday that the project is speculative industrial space that could be ideal for e-commerce companies or other users.
“That seems to be a big driver of our local spec industrial space, but this could also be a great site for other uses,” he said. “It will depend. We will not want to limit ourselves on what types of tenants come here.”
Hillebrand said the firm was attracted to the location because of its proximity to a strong employment base and its easy access to UPS Worldport and local interstates. The project will likely be completed in phases but the timing of the first building has not been determined. Hillebrand also said construction costs have not been finalized.
Louisville’s Land Design and Development Inc. — a surveying, land planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture firm — is assisting on the proposal.
Other projects
Louisville Business First previously reported in April that Poe Cos. intends to construct a 434,000-square-foot speculative office and warehouse building on roughly 28 acres around 1391 Dixie Highway, based on plans filed with Louisville Metro Government. A letter filed with the application states this site has a long history of similar uses of an industrial and commercial nature, including the storage and distribution of coal, lumber and other products in the past. The site is vacant now.
“We’re looking forward to taking something that’s frankly been abandoned for years and … creating something out of it,” Hillebrand previously told LBF. The firm aims to break ground on the project by fall in order to complete it by the second or third quarter of 2022.
These projects follow the reveal in January that Amazon.com Inc. is expanding its operations in Louisville with a new last mile delivery station facility near the Watterson Expressway. Poe Cos. is developing the complex on the site, which had been home to a vacant 225,000-square-foot former bank processing center.