Blue Bird Company

Fort Valley, Georgia – Art Barry III, SIOR, Partner and Associate Broker of Coldwell Banker Commercial Eberhardt & Barry sold the former Dan River Textile facility on Highway 341, Fort Valley, Georgia from JFS Properties, Inc. to Blue Bird Body Company at a gross purchase price of $1,563,000.

Originally built by Bibb Company for fabric manufacturing, this former textile facility contained ±350,000 square feet of manufacturing space on 17 acres. The sale did not include two adjoining undeveloped outparcels containing approximately 5 acres each.

Blue Bird, based in Fort Valley for over 80 years, will locate its new school bus parts fabrication facility in the former Dan River building in Fort Valley. The company plans to improve the ±350,000-square-foot buildings, with an expected production date of January 2009. Several hundred new jobs are expected to be made available once Blue Bird occupies the buildings there.

The facility will also be utilized to warehouse fabricated parts and other school bus body and chassis parts. Examples of fabricated parts include headliners and inside side metals, rub-rails and bows used in the assembly of school bus bodies.

Barry will continue to market, for sale, two five-acre outparcels which are adjacent to the new Blue Bird Corporation campus.