A Prairie Village-based company that specializes in finding multiple tenants for large, vacant industrial buildings is the new owner of the former Davol Inc. manufacturing plant.

Todd Mendon, managing director for Big Industrial LLC, confirmed Monday the company had finalized a deal for the 211,211-square-foot building at 700 E. 22nd St.

“We really like the area,” Mendon said. “Lawrence is growing and is dynamic, and there seems to be a lot of interest from outside the area in the community.”

Big Industrial began negotiations to purchase the building from Davol shortly after the manufacturer of surgical devices announced in August 2002 it would close its Lawrence plant, eliminating 130 jobs.

Terms of the deal, which Mendon said closed last month, were not disclosed. According to county records, the building has an appraised value of $5.5 million.

The company would like to lease the building to a single industrial user, but Mendon said that might be difficult. He said the company was interested in buying the building because it could be divided to accommodate up to seven users.

“There is a smaller subset of people who could utilize the entire building,” Mendon said. “Being able to subdivide it provides us a lot more options. That’s what we look for in a property.”

The company also owns a 500,000-square-foot, three building complex in Topeka’s Forbes Industrial Park and a 200,000-square-foot former Hallmark Cards plant in Osage City. The company also has about 3 million square feet of property in Missouri and Arizona.

Mendon said the Lawrence building had attracted interest from a variety of companies.

The Former Davol building, 700 E. 22nd St., has a new owner, Prairie Village-based Big Industrial LLC. The company hopes to attract up to seven small companies as tenants in the building.

“We have a lot of discussions under way,” Mendon said.

He said the building had about 20,000 square feet of space that could attract office users, about 60,000 square feet of air-conditioned manufacturing space and more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse and distribution space.

According to statistics from the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, dividing the space may be the best route for the company to take.

Lynn Parman, vice president of economic development, has said about 5 percent of all companies that express an interest in Lawrence are looking for space of at least 200,000 square feet. She said about 50 percent of the companies that considered Lawrence were looking for space of less than 75,000 square feet.

Mendon declined to speculate on when the group may land its first tenant for the building.