VIDALIA — Nothing is being ruled out when figuring out how the Fruit of the Loom building in Vidalia’s industrial park will fit into the area’s economic development efforts.

That’s what officials are saying as Martin Mills Inc. continues the process that will ultimately end in the closure of the Vidalia Apparel Fruit of the Loom distribution center.

The announcement of the pending closure was made in May. City officials announced in early June that the company planned to donate the facility — which was built on city property — to Vidalia.

Key players in the future marketing of the building, including Mayor Buz Craft and Concordia Economic Development Director Heather Malone, took a tour of the plant — which is still operating — last week as part of the planning process.

Unlike some shuttered industrial sites in the area — notably the Titan Tire plant — the 1995-vintage construction of the Vidalia Apparel facilities is not so industry-specific as to be prohibitive.

“It could probably be more than textiles, and it could certainly be almost any kind of distribution center,” Craft said.

“The building has 850,000 square feet, plust it is 40-feet tall. It could house any kind of manufacturing or distribution. There are more than 50 shipping bays, and there is infrastructure for water treatment that has not been utilized since the beginning because Fruit of the Loom never opened parts that they intended to.

“There are millions of dollars of infrastructure that we feel we could market to somebody to come in and get right to work without a lot of investment.”

Malone said the facility was originally constructed with the intention of manufacturing, but the manufacturing side of things were never implemented because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“They ended up using it solely as a distribution center, but it is ideal for a manufacturer,” she said. “The concrete floors are reinforced so it can handle the manufacturing process.”

The size and the construction of the building also allow for the city to consider more than one client at a time.

“With the way that it is built, there are firewalls between each section of the building, so we could, with some upgrades, make it where it could become a multi-tenant facility because of the firewall capability,” Malone said.

“When you look at the outside, yes, it’s big, but when you start walking through the facility, it just goes on and on and on. When we looked through it, we were there for over two hours just walking through and taking measurements.”

Joining the city representatives on the tour of the building were representatives from the Louisiana Economic Development Authority.

“The State of Louisiana has walked through the building to look at it, and since they see all the projects that come through the state — and this is a rare gem to have a buildig of that size and ability — they are helping us find a company,” Malone said.

While those looking to lobby for jobs are open to all clients, Malone said they’ve decided to focus on six areas for the property — warehouse distribution, agriculture products, metal fabrication, the oil, gas and chemical industry, food processing and forestry products.

“Based on where we are located, we feel like those are the six areas we can successfully recruit with the most industries,” she said.

The facility isn’t formally on the market yet, since the due diligence processes of surveying, environmental studies and other information gathering are ongoing. Malone said, however, she has already spoken about the building with a couple of industrial site selectors.

Craft said it would be difficult to place a specific market value on the building.

“We haven’t had a lot of 800,000-square foot buildings in the area to compare,” he said.

Craft said, though, with today’s construction costs, moving into such a facility could be a turnkey operation.

“If someone was to come in and try to construct that building with that infrastructure in place, I would dare say they couldn’t build it for less than $50 million, and I think I am being conservative with that,” he said.

Malone said at this point economic developers are keeping the options of selling or leasing the property open.

But Craft said the future of the property boils down to one thing — jobs.

“If they can provide a number of jobs, we will get very serious on the negotiating table to get things moving forward,” he said. “I would be willing to wheel and deal pretty good.”

Martin Mills is set to officially vacate the building Dec. 31.