Helena Chemical Part of Boyle’s $10 Million Deal

One of Collierville’s largest companies, Helena Chemical Co., will move one of its business units into a new, $10 million, mixed-use development in Schilling Farms.

Boyle Investment Co. will build the 52,000-square-foot, two-story building on the northwest corner of Schilling Boulevard and Winchester Road, says John Duncan, Collierville’s director of economic development.

Helena’s Southern business unit will lease nearly 26,000 square feet on the top floor of the building, which will be built on a 3-acre lot at 270 Schilling, just south of Helena’s headquarters.

The company will move about 50 jobs from the HQ to the new site and plans to create 20 more, Duncan says. Collierville’s Industrial Development Board on Tuesday granted Helena a seven-year, $55,636 payment-in-lieu-of-taxes incentive and a seven-year, $166,901 tax abatement for its expansion. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen is scheduled to ratify those incentives Dec. 8.

Part of the ground floor of the new building, about 5,000 square feet, will be filled with retail tenants, Duncan says. Boyle also plans on building a 10,000-square-foot, free-standing retail strip next door. The rest of the space — about 21,000 square feet — will be office.

Linkous Construction should begin construction in early 2015, with the building move-in ready in early 2016, he says. Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors represented Helena in lease negotiations.

Mark Halperin, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Boyle, says the impetus for the development was the growth at Helena, which Boyle has done business with for the past 15 years.

“It’s a terrific Memphis company,” Halperin says. “We’ll build as many buildings as they’d like.”

Helena, which moved its headquarters to Collierville in 2001, is pushing $5 billion in sales, compared to $1.4 billion roughly a decade ago.

“Helena’s expansion puts in place another piece of the emerging mixed-use core of the 443-acre Schilling Farms,” says Rusty Bloodworth, executive vice president of Boyle. “The expansion site completes the southern village core, which includes additional retail and Carrington West, a 125-unit multifamily community, slated to begin construction in the first quarter of 2015.”