STARKVILLE — A 62,000 square-foot industrial facility on Lynn Lane is back on the market.
Castle Properties, owned by Mark Castleberry, backed out of a deal to purchase the building from Starkville Community Church late last month. The shuttered church is now looking to the Golden Triangle Development LINK to help market the property.
SCC has owned the property for nearly 20 years and leased a portion of it to candle manufacturer CURiO. The church began negotiations in July 2022 to sell the property to Castleberry, who in turn was given the right to negotiate a new lease with CURiO.
The church closed in November to merge with Calvary Baptist to form Bridgeway Church on North Jackson Street. On Feb. 15, CURiO announced it could not come to terms with Castleberry and would cease operations at the Lynn Lane facility by the end of the month and lay off at least 27 employees.
Castleberry said the CURiO issue was among the reasons he opted to pull out of the property purchase.
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“It was a factor, but it was also not the only factor,” Castleberry said. “I’ll just stop it at that. I can’t buy everything. And we are looking at several other things.”
Church officials have been reaching out to The LINK for help, and while LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins told The Dispatch he is still playing “phone tag” with former pastor Joseph Horan — who is now co-pastor at Bridgeway — he sees some promise in the site.
The LINK already is marketing the adjacent former Flexsteel complex, he said.
“If you’ve got a building that’s an industrial building, we will put it in our portfolio,” Higgins said. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll get somebody in the building. But I’m going to tell (Horan), ‘We’re going to send you a form and you fill it out and we’ll come take pictures of it.’ Then we’ll help with marketing.”
Castleberry said he also is willing to help the church find another buyer or long-term tenant, adding the building has great potential for commercial or industrial use.
“It could be a children or adult day care on part of it,” he said. “It could obviously be climate-controlled warehousing space. Part of it could, of course, be reused as a church. It is all set up for that and light manufacturing distribution.”
Horan said he and church leadership want a new buyer or tenant that will “generate jobs and be a benefit and bonus to our community.
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“We’re really starting to feel out some phone calls and some interest, but we’re really asking the next few weeks, peripherally speaking, trying to ask what God wants us to do with this building — whether that is lease it long term or sell it so that it can benefit the community,” he said.
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