Owners nearing completion of industrial flip in Shannon
The old Florida Tile plant will welcome Balta Home USA this fall, and more space is available.
It’s been 11 years since Florida Tile closed its ceramic tile manufacturing facility in Shannon. It’s time to lose the Florida Tile moniker and refer to the 172-acre tract as HK Shannon henceforth.
Phillip Hight, the H, and Hardman Knox, the K, purchased the property earlier this year and were able to quickly lure Balta Home USA, a Belgian floor-covering firm, to consolidate operations from Dalton and Calhoun to the Floyd County property off Ga. 53 northeast of Rome.
A portion of the facility was demolished after Romecast Inc. acquired the property in 2013 with
the idea of it becoming a supply-plant for the American industrial behemoth Caterpillar, a deal that never came to fruition. The property was actually deeded to Caterpillar in 2015 for $3,381,974 and had been on the market since then.
Hight and Knox purchased the property from Caterpillar earlier this year for $1,922,000. When Caterpillar put the building back on the market in the fall off 2015, the company not only called on the Rome Floyd Chamber to find a buyer, it also contracted
with a major commercial real estate firm — Newmark, Grubb and Knight Frank — in Atlanta to help find a buyer.
“The broker, Bart Hardison, had called me a number of times about the building and he finally convinced me to come up and take a look at it,” Hight said. “Hardman and I came up, we looked at the building, saw the potential, and we had the vision.” Hight also said he and Knox were acquainted with Chamber President Al Hodge and talked with him about what was
going on in the county and what was going on specifically in the area where Georgia highways 53 and 140 came together.
“With what Lowe’s has done down the street with their new distribution facility, and with the widening of Ga. 140, that was a huge factor in looking at this site,” Knox said.
“While we had it under contract we started talking to other brokers in the market to learn what the demand was up here. A broker we had had a great relationship with, Dan Stubbs with Binswanger,
said he was working with a group that needed about 300,000 square feet, and that ended up being Balta,” Hight said.
Hodge said he and Chamber Economic Development Director Heather Seckman had also been in discussions with representatives for Balta as well. “Dan (Stubbs) was well familiar with Rome and Floyd County,” Hodge said.
Since the deal was completed back in April, Hight and Knox have been busy rehabilitating the shell of the old manufacturing facility that had been left standing since the plant was abandoned in 2006.
“We have been very careful about how we approached the recladding and renovation of this,” Knox said. “We actually tried to maximize the use of existing materials that we demolished from the interior of the building, to use for construction to help close the building in,” Knox said. The original ceramic tile manufacturing building was added on to seven times over the 26 years it was used for that purpose. Virtually all of the interior walls which reflected those additions are gone, with many of those interior walls used to shore up the outer shell of the building. Knox said it had great bones and he and Hight have focused on replacing the skin and internal organs. By internal organs, Hight explained the partners have replaced and upgraded gas lines, electrical service, the old water lines and just about everything directly connected to the building.
For much of the last four months, HK Shannon has been working to put a new roof on the entire 320,000-square-foot structure. “That’s the most dramatic thing,” Hight said. The new roof also covers a new 10,000-square-foot office section that was added to the front of the property closest to Ga. 53.
The entire building — office space and warehouse space alike — will feature LED lighting, which will provide enhanced lighting and reduce power bills at the same time.
Chamber chief Hodge said he has been very impressed with the environmental stewardship Hight and Knox have displayed, from use of interior walls to the low-cost high-efficiency lighting system.
Hight said the partners still have about 100 acres available on the site, and they are hopeful of bringing additional companies to the property. Knox said he can easily envision three more pad sites. “We’ve already talked to several prospects for several of those sites,” Knox said.
“This (whole) site has everything that an industrial user would want. If a user needs rail, this is one of the few sites in Northwest Georgia that has that. You’ve got all the roads coming to the site, we have heavy gas, we have heavy power and heavy water — it has all the things you need,” Hight said.
Knox said access to Interstate 75 was also a major factor in getting comfortable with the site. Knox said the fact that Ga. 140 between Shannon and Adairsville is under construction and would be a work zone for at least the next four years was not a negative factor. “The fact that it’s underway has us comfortable. It’s not a deterrent to our current operations or to our current tenant. We see it as a positive,” Knox said.
Balta has a 12-year lease
with multiple additional options for the 320,000square-foot building and additional acreage that sits in front of the building.
Knox said the plan is to turn over the building to Balta officials around the end of October, at which time Balta will start moving in equipment and racking during early November.
Balta officials have indicated they will transition employees from their Dalton plant to the Rome site first, then fold in staff from the Calhoun facility, which is much newer. Once the moves have been completed, the Rome facility will employ approximately 75 people.
The HK Shannon site will be used strictly as a warehouse and distribution center for the time being. All of the Balta product is currently manufactured at plants offshore.
Knox said Balta officials have from the very outset been excited about the potential for expansion of the facility in Shannon, with the thought that at some point in the future it could also be a manufacturing facility.