Helena Chemical Will Occupy $11 Million Site in Schilling

By Jerome Obermark
– The Commercial Appeal –

Helena Chemical Co. will move its corporate headquarters from an East Memphis office building to a new four-story office building with104,000 square feet in Schilling Farms.

Boyle Development Co. is the developer.

Boyle is a partner in 443-acre Schilling Farms, a mixed-use, master-planned community about one mile east of Bailey Station on the south side of Poplar in Collierville.

Completion of the new office building is expected in August 2001.

“Helena will occupy 80 percent of the building,” said Mark Halperin, senior vice president of office properties for Boyle.

The remaining 20 percent of the space will be available for lease, Halperin said.

He said the cost of the new office building is more than $11 million. Helena has committed to a 15 year lease.

Halperin said he pursued Helena as an office tenant for more than 20 years.

Currently, Helena has 175 employees in Memphis at its headquarters in the Crescent Center at 6075 Poplar and its Mid-South sales division at Southwind, said Jim Arnold, manager of advertising/public affairs for Helena.

Those offices will be consolidated in the new building, and the company will expand its local employment base by the time the new building opens, he said.

Helena expects to have 208 employees at the headquarters when it is ready to occupy. The company projects it will have 250 employees there by 2004.

Helena Chemical, with $1.47 billion in sales last year, is privately owned by Marubeni America, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Marubeni Corp., Arnold said.

Helena is primarily a distributor of agricultural chemicals for crop production and crop protection.

Nationwide, Helena has more than 2,000 employees at more than 200 sales locations and administrative offices.

“Helena is looking forward to relocating its headquarters to Schilling Farms,” said Mike McCarty, president and chief executive officer.

“With Shelby County business and residential area expanding to the east, we feel this is a pro-active move that will serve the long-term interests of Helena and its employees. The business and residential concept of Schilling Farms in a park-like setting is unique, and we believe it will be a positive environment in which to conduct business.”

Schilling Farms eventually is expected to have more than a million square feet of office space. Its other components will include a hotel, restaurants, banks, physician’s offices and retail.

It also has a YMCA, a day-care center, a school, two large apartment communities and a variety of single-family homes.

Wyatt Aiken of Commercial Tennessee Inc., a Memphis firm that represented Helena in its search for a new headquarters, said Helena’s decision makers were impressed because the Schilling Farms development is so well planned.

The new four-story office will be constructed of brick, pre-cast concrete and high-performance reflective glass.

Hnedak Bobo Group is the architectural firm. Helena’s interior space will be designed by Looney Ricks Kiss.

Mid-America Construction Co. is the contractor, and Fisher & Arnold Inc. provided the landscape design for the new building.