STARKVILLE – A real estate investment company has bought the vacant Flexsteel property, with the intent of splitting it into a mixed-use development of pickleball courts, industrial enterprises and more.
Altus Equity Group purchased the Flexsteel lots at 212 Industrial Park Road in May, according to the property’s deed. The former furniture plant has sat vacant for four years. Altus has offices in Texas, South Carolina and California, according to its website.
Now, the group is shopping it around to businesses ranging from homegrown recreational startups to multinational manufacturing firms, hoping to lease out the larger structures to multiple tenants.
“The goal is to get it leased. There have been some pretty large companies, though I can’t disclose them right now,” Sebastian Smith, Altus’ head of commercial property management, told The Dispatch on Wednesday.
The Flexsteel plant shut down in 2020 after 35 years of manufacturing furniture, a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was once Starkville’s sixth largest employer with more than 300 workers, though that had declined to 170 by the time it shut its doors.
Joe Max Higgins, CEO of the Golden Triangle Development LINK, also wasn’t ready to name potential tenants during a Dec. 13 Starkville board of aldermen work session, but he hinted at the kinds of businesses considering leases.
He said several parties both local and international have already expressed interest in leasing portions of the property. A manufacturing business based in Asia is considering grabbing 20,000 to 30,000 square feet, he said, and will be walking through in January with an engineer and architect to figure out how much it would cost to alter the building for its needs.
Higgins said the smallest of the three buildings has a “very promising tenant” looking at the space for manufacturing sub-assembly, the process of assembling components for later use in industrial manufacturing. That project has apparently been working with a team under Edward Kemp, Starkville Utilities’ general manager, to prepare the building’s power infrastructure for its new occupants.
“(Altus has) done some work on it. They’re out there working on them as we speak,” Higgins said Friday. “(It’s) a name brand company if they come. Somebody you know. Somebody you’d like to have in your portfolio.”
Aside from industrial uses, Higgins mentioned Starkville’s new indoor pickleball courts are also looking at the former Flexsteel complex.
The local enterprise sparked a revamp of the city’s entire beer and light wine policy in November, winning the possibility of serving beer to players alongside snacks and sports drinks.
While the area has been dominated by industrial use over the years, such as concrete production and Flexsteel itself, the heavily-trafficked pickleball courts at McKee Park suggest there is demand for the startup. Mayor Lynn Spruill said the area is shifting toward mixed use, with several healthy commercial and retail enterprises that could help fledgling businesses.
“It’s not the busiest part of town, and up until 10 years ago I would’ve said it’s a very strong challenge,” she said. “But the Triangle Crossing Shopping Center is there and so is Umble Coffee Co., which is very popular. You’ve also got the (county farmers cooperative) there. … You’ve got some drawbacks to being there like the two concrete plants, so you’ve got an interesting mix.”
She applauded the purchase of the property, noting that until Altus arrived Flexsteel had been both unable to find a buyer for the entire property and unwilling to subdivide it into smaller parcels. With Altus in the picture smaller businesses will now have a chance to put down roots there.
“That was a very large piece of property that a small local investor would be hard-pressed to buy and make a business out of,” she said. “Do I want local investors to be invested in Starkville? Certainly. … But if Flexsteel didn’t want to break it up to sell it, which they did not, that only leaves you with someone who has significant deep pockets to turn it around and make it profitable.”
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