Marketers search for tenant for Sony building

Credit: Jay Hare / jhare@dothaneagle.com

Cars drive pass Dothan's Sony plant Thursday.

By: Lance Griffin | Dothan Eagle
Published: August 26, 2010

For sale or lease: Almost a million square feet of industrial building space. Occupant may move in very soon.

Although it is a month before Sony closes the doors on its Dothan facility, marketers are already looking for another business to occupy the building and hire area workers — but challenges lie ahead.

"We have a lot of people going to bat for us," said Matt Parker, president of the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce. "We just have to go out and throw a few pitches."

Sony has selected commercial real estate marketer Binswanger to help promote the facility to potential occupants, and the company has stated it is already marketing the building to manufacturers in several sectors including transportation and warehousing, public administration, educational and healthcare services.

Along with Binswanger, Parker said local and state efforts are under way to market the building as well.

"We have already submitted the building for some codenamed (confidential) projects," Parker said. "At the same time, I have already fielded calls from different groups that like to do redevelopment of industrial projects."

The facility may be attractive to several industries because it is already built and equipped with utilities and roads.

However, marketing an industrial building during tough economic times can be difficult since businesses have been shedding jobs, not creating them. Also, the facility was created specifically for the production of magnetic tape. Prospective new industries would likely have to do significant revamping of the building or buildings in order to locate there.

The Sony plant sits on 67.6 acres off West Main Street in Dothan and includes three buildings. The main building is about 765,000 square feet, a second "AME" building serves primarily as a warehouse and is about 87,000 square feet. The third building is occupied by Nypro, a plastics manufacturer.

Marketers search for tenant for Sony building

Share This:

More from this channel:

Reader Comments

Deal of the Day

Most Popular

Spot Crime

Things to Do