FORT WAYNE, IN-General Mills is building a 1.5-million-square-foot distribution center here that will handle about 20% of the food producer’s products. Rockefeller Group Development Corp., an operating company of New York City-based Rockefeller Group, is building the center.

Minneapolis-based General Mills already leases a 750,000-square-foot building in the local area, plus some space in smaller facilities nearby. Les Smith with Rockefeller tells GlobeSt.com that the leases were up in a year and the company decided to consolidate into a new building. “The company is doing better as consumers are willing to spend more for food,” Smith says.

Construction of the property, taking place on a 100-acre site at 12300 Bluffington Rd., is expected to be complete by August 2012. General Mills will lease the building, which will be used for storing and distributing dry finished products such as cereals, granola bars and cake mixes. The building will include more than 15,000 square feet of office for administrative operations.

This is Rockefeller’s second development for General Mills. Rockefeller built a similar-sized distribution center for the company in Social Circle, GA that was completed in 2010. However, Smith says there’s not a lot of more-than-one-million-square-foot industrial buildings under construction in the country. “There are projects going on everywhere, I can tell you without equivocation that the market has become much stronger, though this might be the largest distribution project being built right now in the Midwest,” he says.