Permobil's New Facility Wins Industrial Development Award

• By Laurie Watanabe
• May 19, 2011

Permobil's newly built North American headquarters in Lebanon, Tenn., has another admirer: the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIOP).

The NAIOP's Nashville chapter honored Permobil's facility as its Industrial Development of the Year award winner. Manous Design, based in Lebanon, provided the planning, architecture, interior design and engineering on the headquarters, which comprises 80,000 square feet of manufacturing space and nearly 40,000 square feet of office space.

Permobil employees moved into the new facility late last year, and Permobil held an open house and reception in March, before the start of the International Seating Symposium, which was held in Nashville.

Darin Lowery, VP of operations for Permobil, said in a news announcement, "We are excited to receive the Industrial Development of the Year award from NAIOP. Much thought and planning went into the development of our new building with Mike Manous and Frierson construction to create an efficient building with green features that create a functional, yet very comfortable work environment."

In addition to enabling Permobil to adopt a flow-line production process due to the much larger space, the facility was created to be environmentally friendly, with dozens of skylights, bamboo flooring, a raingarden and a solar array that can offset the manufacturer's power consumption by up to 30 percent.

Permobil (permobil.com) also said that within two months of moving into the new facility and using the flow-line production process, it had increased its custom-built power chair production by eight-fold.