(INDIANAPOLIS) — Elanco Animal Health has broken ground for its new global headquarters in Indianapolis.
The six-story headquarters will anchor a 40-acre Elanco campus, occupying about half of the abandoned General Motors stamping plant property southwest of downtown. The property has been a vacant hulk since GM closed the plant 11 years ago.
Mayor Joe Hogsett calls the headquarters a “rebirth” for the Near Westside. And Elanco president Jeff Simmons says the headquarters will expand the boundaries of downtown, connecting a revitalized westside to the Indianapolis Zoo and White River State Park.
The city and state will make that connection literal, with two new bridges across the White River — one pedestrian bridge and one highway bridge. The city anticipates a new mixed-use development on the other half of the GM property.
The headquarters is the centerpiece of a $300 million Elanco investment in Indianapolis, announced a year-and-a-half ago, which Simmons says will make the city an “epicenter” of veterinary research.
Simmons says the GM property is a rare opportunity to acquire property that size in the downtown of a major city. And he notes it’s a rare redevelopment that won’t uproot a single tree — instead, Elanco will be planting trees after bulldozing the remains of the GM buildings.
The headquarters is expected to open in two or three years.
