WEST JEFFERSON, OH-Mars Petcare has hired Duke Realty Corp. to complete a 1.3-million-square-foot build-to-suit distribution center here to support the company’s pet food manufacturing facilities in Ohio. The new building, likely to cost about $52 million, will be constructed on 78 acres at Duke’s Park 70 in this Columbus suburb.

The company plans to consolidate two other Ohio distribution facilities into this new regional hub when it is complete, says Jim Connor, EVP with Duke’s Midwest office. Construction should be complete by September 2010, he says

The project is one of the few new distribution facilities in the country that’s larger than one million square feet, especially in the Midwest. Connor agrees, but says the plan is not that unusual. “Clearly, two or three years ago, buildings of this size were all the rage, you were seeing a new one announced every four-to-six weeks,” Connor tells GlobeSt.com. “But this is a cost-effective solution for them, it consolidates space between centers that are about 40 miles from each other, provides tax breaks and incorporates new practices to build in efficiencies. You have to have those things to justify that size a building today.”

With this new facility, the 300-acre Park 70, started in 2008, will be about half-full. Duke constructed two other build-to-suits at the park, a one million square foot facility for Kellogg and an 800,000-square-foot distribution center for Restoration Hardware. “If we had done a smaller building, it would have looked out of place,” Connor says. The company owns or manages almost 10 million square feet of industrial and office space in the Columbus market.