STARKVILLE — When Sylvia Byrd, department head for the Mississippi State University Extension Service’s Office of Nutrition Education, was looking to expand its services in 2022, she knew she needed to find a new space.

Earlier this year, after learning about the Professional Park, a new housing space for area businesses and organizations in Starkville, she found the right home for the expansion.

“If you’ve been on campus, you know how busy it is,” Byrd said. “Parking is a challenge. So the ease of the location (was important to us). So we started looking for space when we knew that we would need to be looking to expand our services. It just worked out that this property became available and when I found out about it, I just called and we went to look at it and decided that yes, this would meet our needs.”

Castle Properties owner Mark Castleberry told The Dispatch the company has started a $2 million renovation project to revitalize the former Cadence Operations Center at 12239 Hwy. 182 W. next to Cannon Ford.

Castleberry said the project to renovate the 40,000-square-foot facility began earlier this week and is expected to be complete by the fall.

When finished, the Professional Park will feature enough space to fit around 10 separate business spaces and 4,800 square feet of warehousing space for tenants. Space is leasing for approximately $18 per square foot, according to Castleberry.

“We believe the market needs good quality office space,” Castleberry said. “New construction is very, very prohibitive right now. We felt that when we purchased this, that the building was a good value, it’s in a very good location, great parking and was well maintained and we were able to lease it at an acceptable rate.”

Work on the building is now in the demolition phase, with JMorgan Company doing the demo work. The demolition will include knocking out walls, redoing the ceiling for the first and second floors and repainting.

Castleberry said other than the MSU Extension’s office of Nutritional Education, a law firm has also leased space. Castle Properties is also working with another prospective tenant.

Byrd said her team expects to move in by mid-September, and its new offices will include space for new training kitchens to teach clients about nutrition, health and food learning and even other facilities to improve its virtual learning programs.

“It’s going to have a teaching and training facility that will have teaching kitchens that will add to our educational material,” Byrd said. “It’ll allow us to up our game and virtual program delivery, which is something that we’re planning for the future.”