South Bend's dilapidated Bayer factory sold to charity for $1

ELKHART, Ind. -- A massive building formerly used to make tablets to relieve indigestion will now be used to store food to feed the poor.\nFeed the Children, a not-for-profit Christian charity based in Oklahoma City, announced Wednesday it has bought Bayer Corp.'s vacant 933,000-square-foot factory. The $1 cost of the building is less than the cost of a package of Alka-Seltzer, which was once made in the building.\nBayer sold the building for $1 because it would have cost an estimated $20 million to demolish.\nJoe Martin, senior vice president and general manager of Bayer Diagnostics, said he was excited about the sale because it would bring jobs to Elkhart while helping a worthy charity.\n"We saved ourselves some money by not knocking it down and we saved the community money by bringing jobs in," Martin said. "Everybody wins in this situation."\nLarry Jones who founded Feed the Children with his wife Frances in 1979, said the charity was looking for a distribution center, but the Bayer building provided a greater opportunity.\n"The Bayer building will be the cornerstone of our international expansion and will be absolutely critical as we work with various public and private sector partners to create a research and development center aimed at improving the nutrition of children around the world," he said.\nFeed the Children said in its proposal that it would employ between 250 to 500 people in the city about 15 miles east of South Bend, including administrative, laboratory, warehouse and transportation jobs.\nMayor David Miller said the first choice of the city was to see a large company with thousands of jobs to move into the facility, but he was pleased that Feed the Children bought the building.\n"This is the start of something good and something big that Bayer made possible by this donation," he said.\nBesides its work for the hungry, Oklahoma City-based Feed The Children also supplies clothing and other staples to the needy and has provided medical, educational and disaster relief aid all over the United States and to 51 other countries.