COLUMBUS, Ind. — A developer is seeking variances to build a large-scale food and beverage production facility known as “Project Whiteboard” near Edinburgh.
The Bartholomew County Board of Zoning Appeals will hear requests related to this project at Monday’s meeting, which will be held at Columbus City Hall at 7 p.m.
“The applicant is proposing to construct a 532,000 square foot food and beverage production facility, including a 368,000 square foot manufacturing facility with an attached 78,000 square foot cold storage building and a separate 86,000 square foot beverage plant,” planning staff wrote in a report.
The subject property is located at 11900 N. County Road 200W in German Township, just east of Indiana Premium Outlets in Edinburgh. According to the staff report, the site is a little more than 88 acres.
A letter of intent from Foresite Group LLC, an engineering, planning, design and consulting firm, said the facility will be named “Project Whiteboard” and produce “bakery products and beverages.”
“The development is intended to be completed in stages with stage one as the main production facility, an approximate 368,000-square-foot plant, along with access, parking, landscaping, and utility infrastructure,” the firm wrote. “The overall site plan includes considerations for future phases to construct an adjoining cold storage facility for distribution and a potential free standing secondary plant.”
The applicant, R&T Woodside, LLC, is requesting conditional use approval to allow the facility to be built in the Wellfield Protection Overlay District, as well as two development standard variances.
One is to allow a primary structure to be up to 100 feet in height, which is twice as tall as the 50 foot maximum. The other is a request for a variance in regards to maximum wall sign sizes.
Planning staff are recommending a continuance on the conditional use request so that the Eastern Bartholomew Water Corp. has more time to study the proposed project and determine if it would affect the utility’s drinking water wellfield, which is located on a property to the immediate southeast of the project site.
They also recommend a continuance on the sign variance so that the applicant can correct inconsistencies in their application materials and provide additional information.
However, planning staff recommended that the variance on building height be approved, as all criteria have been met.
“The applicants have indicated this would apply to the 78,000–square–foot cold storage facility and an additional 33,565 square feet of the manufacturing facility occupied by material silos,” staff wrote.
The staff report also stated that since the zoning ordinance already permits materials silos of up to 100 feet in height, the applicant only needs this variance for the cold storage facility.
Jason Hester, president of the Greater Columbus Economic Development Corp., called Project Whiteboard a “tremendous investment for the Taylorsville area.”
“It’s a project my office has been working for a while,” he said. “It’s a project we’re very much supportive of. It’s going to be a fantastic project for our community, especially if we can get through the site through the variance requests and then later through incentive discussions.”
Hester said that R&T Woodside is a legal entity that the involved company is using to submit its application. He could not confirm or deny the identity of the main company due to a confidentiality agreement.
However, some of the details on the project’s board of zoning appeals application indicate that Irresistible Foods Group or one of its brands, King’s Hawaiian, may be involved in the project.
In the application, “Joe Leonardo” is listed as the contact person for R&T Woodside. According to LinkedIn, an individual with the same name is the senior vice president, chief operations officer at King’s Hawaiian and the vice president of strategic operations at Irresistible Foods.
The address listed for R&T Woodside on the application — “1411 190th, Gardena, CA” — also appears to match the headquarters for Irresistible Foods, which is 1411 W. 190th St., Suite 500, Gardena, Calif. Additionally, the address listed for R&T Woodside on INBiz — 19161 Harborgate Way, Torrance, Calif. — matches the corporate office for King’s Hawaiian.
Jason Hester
Hester said that more information about the project, such as the level of investment, number of jobs, and wages will emerge once an incentive application is presented to county officials. The applicant may also choose to share some of this information during the board of zoning appeals meeting, he added.
“The company can’t truly decide to do the project here until they know that they can actually build the facility that they need to build, so meaning at the right height and on that site, which happens to be within a wellfield area,” Hester said. “So that’s why the company has applied for the variances at this time, even before they’ve applied for the incentives, because this is really first step. They have to know, can they do the project at this site?”
