Delphine Enterprise Center breathes new life into facility

A half-million-square-foot Waynesboro facility that had been sitting unused has a new lease on life again.

“It means a lot to get people back into this building,” said Rebecca Polan, the president of real estate and corporate services at Allied Logistics, which is part of the team that has purchased the old Mohawk building on South Delphine Avenue with plans to fill it up with manufacturing and warehousing operations.

Delphine Enterprise Management is partnering with Legacy Group Holding Corp., another local real-estate developer, to rehabilitate the 464,000-square-foot office, warehousing and manufacturing facility on South Delphine Avenue with convenient access to I-64 and I-81, railroads and international and regional airports. The facility will be renovated to accommodate users of all sizes.

For more than 50 years, the 22-acre site, now renamed Delphine Enterprise Center, was home to carpet manufacturers Wayn-Tex LLC and later Mohawk Industries, which closed in 2010. At their height, the companies employed hundreds of area residents.

Mathers Construction Team is the property’s first tenant and will oversee the rehabilitation.

The development group marked the formal grand opening of the new Delphine Enterprise Center on Nov. 7 with a community event that drew more than 100 people to see what 500,000 square feet of space under roof looks like.

“The entrepreneurial spirit is alive in Waynesboro,” said State Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton. “You can feel it. There is an energy here that you don’t feel in a lot of other communities around this state. I think it’s exciting. But even with that spirit, you have to have a platform. There has to be somewhere to launch. And now you have another platform to launch business from.”

Also on hand for the event was Jim Cheng, the Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade.

“I go around the world with the governor taking delegations trying to bring companies to relocate in Virginia. What we really need are great sites for them to locate. I think this is going to be a great, wonderful half-million-square-foot site that we will have in our database,” Cheng said.