Unlike the first Bottleworks project, this one was built from the ground up.
The project began with the transformation of what was once the world’s largest Coca-Cola plant into a standout attraction. Wisconsin-based developer Hendricks Commercial Properties broke ground on that effort in 2018, transforming the vacant factory into The Garage food hall and the Bottleworks Hotel, among other attractions. At the same time, Hendricks promised a second phase to the effort, a set of new buildings packed with apartments, condos, and ground-floor retail built next to the old plant, to open in 2022.
The pandemic threw a wrench into the works.
Though the Bottleworks Phase I timeline remained relatively intact, with the hotel opening in late 2020 and The Garage following in January 2021, the Phase II building stalled, admits Hendricks vice president Lance Evinger. “Covid made everything crazy,” he says, from staffing to costs of materials. Phase II didn’t start construction until summer 2022, around the same time it was initially expected to finish.
And by then, the project was dramatically different.
“We started planning the whole project in 2015, 2016,” Evinger says, and final approvals from the city and county came in 2017. Back then, Hendricks planned to follow the Coke plant makeover with two mixed-use buildings covering the flatiron space where College and Mass avenues intersect. Those structures would contain 240 condo and apartment units, office space, two parking garages, and retail and service businesses on the ground floor. But in 2021, Hendricks told city officials they wouldn’t build housing after all, and the new structures would instead be fully commercial space.
Demand drove the adjustment.
“Between when we first began construction and finished Phase I, the neighborhood had changed so much,” says Evinger. “So many homes and apartments were built, and a lot of housing filled in around us.” At the same time, he says, potential commercial tenants came knocking. “We thought, OK, there’s demand for offices. So we pivoted, and within a few months, we got the entire 100,000-square-foot building leased up.” Both buildings should be fully occupied by the end of 2025.
Profitability was also a factor.
It’s a lot cheaper to develop office space than residential, Evinger says. “You’re building two bathrooms per floor instead of one for every unit,” he noted as just one example of the difference in costs. Then there was the unexpected explosion in the price of construction goods. “We’d get quotes for materials that wouldn’t even be good for 30 days,” he says. “We were in the middle of construction and committed, and prices kept going up.” So a flip to office space seemed like a way to keep things closer to the original budget.
Did someone say budget?
The budget for the entire Bottleworks project was $300 million, which included Phase III—two buildings with additional commercial space running along College Avenue to Ninth Street. Unlike Phase II, it was always intended to be offices. As you might imagine, Hendricks is spending way more to get over the finish line. “We’re through Phase II,” Evinger says, “and we’re already well over what we expected to spend on the whole project.” Check back after Phase III (no concrete timeline is established) for the final number, as “right now I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess,” Evinger says.
More office space has detractors.
Jeffery Tompkins, the principal of Indy-based urbanism think tank Proformus, points to the multimillion-dollar plan to convert downtown’s Gold Building to apartments as an example of the wave of repurposing office towers into housing. “When the market shifts or another shiny office development opens in the suburbs, they risk becoming stranded assets,” he says of buildings like the Bottleworks second and third phases. “Every time we deny density in housing or fail to encourage mixed use, we undercut downtown’s resiliency.”
The pivot also raises concerns about foot traffic to local businesses.
Tompkins, who lives downtown, says that unlike residential buildings, office structures “generate activity during the workday but sit empty at night and on weekends.” By his logic, the loss of those 240 residences in favor of a block of office space also means the loss of 240 families that could be visiting the restaurants, service providers, and shops in Bottleworks and beyond. Visit the business district of any major city’s downtown on the weekend, and you’ll see what he means.
But Mass Ave might be the exception.
Tompkins’ opinion on the conundrum of building office space walking distance from the decommissioned Gold Building is worth considering, especially for a sustainable tomorrow. But foot traffic may be less of a concern. Vendors at The Garage food hall say that while weekends and evenings are busy, weekdays can be extremely slow—so office workers could be a midday boon. According to Evinger, the boost could extend beyond Bottleworks. He lives just a few blocks from it, so his investment isn’t just professional, he says. “We’re going to see a lot more people walking around, sitting outside eating, going in shops. We believe that these office workers will bring benefits to all the businesses up and down Mass Ave, not just the ones in our buildings.”
