A longtime Elkhart business owner doesn’t like the lack of industrial building he’s seen in recent years, and he’s doing more than simply complaining about it.
Tom Jellison is building a new 36,000-square-foot structure on Roske Drive off C.R. 17 on Elkhart’s far east side that he says will be suitable for a wide range of uses. If he can’t find a tenant, he’ll put it to use by his own steel fabrication and distribution company, Flexco Products, he said.
“I don’t know really what I want to do with it yet,” Jellison said. “The reason I’m doing it is nobody’s building anything, and it’s irritating, and I’m bored. We need to get things rolling in this town. People see something going up, maybe that will get them going again.”
Jellison said the project will serve another purpose, as a sort of “experiment” to see how long it takes wade through the city and county bureaucracy.
“Rumor has it that it takes an extremely long time to get permits in Elkhart County now, and I want to see, so that’s what we’re doing,” he said. “We’re seeing how long it takes ... whether our community is entrepreneurial like it used to be, because nobody’s really put any buildings up for six years. This has been the worst drought that I can remember.”
There are reasons for that, he noted. Construction costs have risen, and rental rates are low, making it tough for a developer building on speculation to recoup his costs. But Jellison said he’s optimistic he’ll have the building leased before it’s finished.