■ Redevelopment of a shuttered factory in Monroe underscores the potential for reusing vacant commercial or industrial buildings in the region, developer says.
BY CHARLES SLAT
It appeared destined to become a white elephant — a sprawling, empty factory with an unhappy past and an uncertain future.
But Roger L. Homrich says he saw potential when he looked at the vacant, former IKO manufacturing plant at 1151 W. Elm Ave. on the fringe of a Monroe neighborhood.
The complex closed in 2000 after residents and city officials raised objections to the smells and environmental impacts of the shingle-paper manufacturing operations there.
Vacant and abandoned, it had all the signs of becoming a Rust Belt relic, an artifact of a time when factories commonly churned near the doorsteps of modest middle-class neighborhoods.
Now Mr. Homrich says he hopes his redevelopment of the property will symbolize the potential for abandoned industrial hulks that litter Southeast Michigan in the wake of the worst recession in generations.
Mr. Homrich is the son of Roger I. Homrich, president of Carleton-based Homrich Inc.
“We have a lot of great buildings out there — some only a few years old — that are empty all over Southeast Michigan,” Mr.Homrich observes. “That’s going to be big in our future — repurposing these structures from an era gone by.”
The 200,000-square-foot facility operated for decades as a paper-making plant under various owners. The last was IKO, which brought jobs to the area, but began being viewed by nearby residents as an undesirable neighbor that generated odors, noise, illness and complaints.
After being cited for violations of air pollution laws and hit with a class-action lawsuit, the plant left town.
In stepped Arbor-Vale, Mr. Homrich’s Dundee-based property redevelopment company, which bought the property about a year ago.
“I told people my goal was to take this from controversy to cupcakes,” Mr. Homrich says.
He appears to have achieved that, quite literally.
Instead of continued decay, the former IKO plant now is warehousing for Quality Food Brands Inc., a Monroe-based firm that has seen a growth spurt. It’s using much of the building for storage of its cake and cookie mixes and other food products. The most decrepit sections of the old plant were recently razed.
“They had an opportunity to develop outside of Monroe and, fortunately, we were able to find a solution with that property so they could expand their business and invest further in the community,” Mr. Homrich explained. “They were willing to invest in Monroe, but really didn’t have a lot of options in Monroe,” he says. “There were significant challenges to repurpose these facilities but fortunately we were able to do it.”
“It really couldn’t have worked better because when you decide you’re going to invest in a property of that size and with the economic climate that we had a little over a year ago, it can be a daunting situation,” Mr. Homrich says.
It also couldn’t have worked out better for Linda Compora, a neighborhood resident whose opposition to IKO operations led to her election to city council. No longer on council, she’s happy with the re-use of the building.
Mr. Homrich has done everything that he said he would,” Ms. Compora said. “We couldn’t be more pleased.”
She said the warehousing operation hasn’t impacted the neighborhood. “We don’t even know they’re there and I’m glad to see part of the factory coming down.
Finally, we have some good neighbors.”
Mr. Homrich recently razed a northern section of the building where the old paper mill line once operated, and he figures Quality is occupying about 75 percent of the remaining useable space.
“It will improve the viewscape,” he said of the demolition. “If you let those buildings fall into further disrepair you’ll have a situation similar to what we have to the north of us where it just sits around.
They don’t have redevelopment potential, so I want to prevent any safety hazard or anything that brings down the value of the whole property.”
Among the largest challenges to such re-use is environmental hazards that might exist on the old properties and ridding sites of obsolete structures, he says. But in many cases, reusing buildings can be less costly than building anew.
“We have quite a surplus in Monroe County or Southeastern Michigan of just about every classification of real estate,” he says.
“My goal with this is that there are other properties, even in Monroe County, that could benefit from this similar process.”
“I guess it’s trying to change the public opinion of what’s possible with these facilities. A lot of people tend to just write them off. We hope people will understand there’s a lot of potential with these buildings.”
