Tenants announced for business park at former Upper Valley Mall site

Formerly the Upper Valley Mall, the property is undergoing a complete interior and exterior renovation, and has been repositioned as a business park for office and light industrial users, according to site developer Industrial Corporate Properties (ICP).

Eby-Brown, based in Naperville, Illinois, is a wholesale distributor to the convenience store industry. The company occupied 35,000 square feet of the business park this year, using this location to expand nearby distribution capabilities, according to an ICP press release.

Rittal North America, based in Chicago, will be occupying the business park in the late spring, creating a 130,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art distribution facility close to their manufacturing plant in Urbana, ICP said. The company is a global manufacturer and system solutions provider of industrial and IT enclosures, racks, and accessories and is a subsidiary of Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, based in Germany.

“The interior renovation is well underway, so the space is an open and blank canvas, making it easier for tenants to envision their company in the space,” said Dean Miller, senior vice president of ICP. “Many companies have pent-up demand and need expansion space sooner rather than later. ICP can build-out space at the park to meet a user’s specific needs and do so faster and less expensively than with new construction.”

ICP owner Chris Semarjian said his team has done “an incredible job” converting former retail spaces into business parks, allowing communities to regain lost jobs and tax revenue and upgrade abandoned properties.

“Upper Valley Business Park is yet another retail conversion success story and we transformed it in just over six months,” Semarjian said.

Matt Osowski, of NAI Ohio Equities and representative of Rittal, said the company was searching for a warehouse of distribution space in the Urbana-Springfield market and found that the Upper Valley Business Park was a good fit.

“ICP was fantastic in helping to identify their needs, delivering a space plan that makes sense and providing us with realistic expectations on how a mall to industrial space redevelopment works,” Osowski said.

ICP agreed to purchase the Upper Valley Mall property – located at 1457 Upper Valley Pike – from the Clark County Land Reutilization Corp for $2.25 million last June, and the sale closed Aug. 6.