Groundbreaking on shell building in Nashville was two years in the making

NASHVILLE — The weather was hot, and the comments were brief Tuesday morning when Nash County and town officials assembled in the Nashville Business Center to break ground on a 40,000-square-foot shell building.

This moment was two years in the making. In 2022, the town of Nashville entered into an economic development partnership with Nash County. At Tuesday’s ceremony, elected leaders and staff from the two governing bodies dug shovels into the soil to signify that construction was ready to begin.

Nash County Economic Development is currently marketing the shell building situated on 5.4 acres for sale at $2.56 million.

In her remarks, Nashville Mayor Brenda Brown acknowledged her gratitude for the $350,794 in grants from the Golden LEAF Foundation that were used to fund the site preparation work required before construction could begin.

Following the event, she praised the cooperation between the county and town to get to this point.

“It’s great the way everything came together,” Brown said, adding the new facility will benefit the town and the county and bring jobs to the area.

Nash County Economic Development Director Andy Hagy in his remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony cited the recent sale of a Nash County shell building in the southern end of the county.

“The shell building program is a key Nash County economic development initiative which has proven its success, most recently with the location of GXP-Storage, a life science company who purchased the county’s second Middlesex shell building and is creating up to 100 new jobs with an average annual wage of $78,000,” Hagy said.

Hagy stated that construction costs for the shell building in Nashville are a projected $1.8 million. Its completion is slated for January.

“A shell building consists of four-exterior walls and a roof and is designed to be sold to a business, who can then customize it to meet their unique operational needs,” Hagy noted. “As ‘speed to market’ continues to grow as a high priority for national and international businesses — shell buildings can save a business up to eight months of valuable time by accelerating a large part of the permitting and construction process.”

Robbie Davis, chairman of the Nash County Board of Commissioners, said the county has built 10 shell building and that they are all occupied except for its newest building on the southwest side of the I-95 interchange for N.C. 97 in the far southern part of the county.

The site is composed of a 100,000-square-foot structure on more than six acres, with the asking price being $5.5 million and with the structure being expandable to up to 200,000 square feet.

The Nashville Business Center currently includes food products supplier Atlantic Natural Foods and ACDi Electronics Manufacturing.

Additionally, BuildLabs, a custom home designer and manufacturer, plans to invest $11.5 million in a 30,000-square-foot location in the center.