Cool Machines buys Innovation Center

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

A move into the former Van Wert Innovation Center on Fox Road should help a local business expand its line of innovative products.

Cool Machines owner Dave Krendl said his company’s move from rented space on Industrial Drive to the former Innovation Center will help the company expand and better organize its operations.

“It (the move) allows us to grow, obviously with other products,” Krendl said, noting that the new building provides 40,000 square feet of space, versus 30,000 in Cool Machines’ old facility.

Cool Machines designs and manufactures a number of products, from those that blow insulation into building for insulation contractors to special effects machines that create fake snow for filmmakers.

He said the new location would also allow Cool Machines to add a product line, stating that the company has been looking at taking on a heat exchange technology product being brought to this country by a European company.

The move to the Fox Road building is the second one for Cool Machines, which was started in 2004 in New Haven, Ind., but has been in Van Wert since 2006, largely because most of the company’s 16 employees live in this area.

Krendl said buying a building, rather than leasing one, would be a big advantage in the growth of the business. “It’s just difficult to keep making improvements to a building you don’t own,” he said.

Krendl’s partner, Andy Schulte, agreed. “It allows us to modify the building and put up additions and do exactly what we need for our assembly process, rather than trying to rent a space and having any additions we make lost if we move out,” Schulte explained.

Cool Machines’ purchase of the former Van Wert Innovation Center is also a good move for the Community Improvement Corporation, which owned the building. The facility had been used as a business “incubator,” a place where start-up businesses could locate to keep costs down until they were doing well enough to find their own place.

Jon Rhoades, president of the CIC, said the Innovation Center provided low rent and other subsidized costs to start-ups to help them be successful.

The problem, though, Rhoades said, was that the local development organization had trouble keeping the building at full occupancy. “One of the problems we’ve had was the size of the building was more than we could fill,” Rhoades said, adding that CIC board members felt selling the building and purchasing at least one smaller building to use as a business “incubator” was their best move.

Meanwhile, Krendl and Schulte said their business hopes to complete the move and be fully operational in the new facility by early to mid-September.