Mebane mayor Ed Hooks gathered Tuesday morning with other city of Mebane and Orange County officials for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Medline medical distribution center on the edge of Mebane, in western Orange County.
Construction of the 1.2-million square-foot distribution center on 175 acres and was completed in 2021, though the ceremonial ribbon-cutting had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, company officials said Tuesday. Medline’s Mebane facility is located at 5511 West Ten Road in Mebane.
The Mebane distribution center is Medline’s second facility in North Carolina, said Medline regional vice president of operations Paul Niederkorn. “We are truly one of these flagship facilities in the Southeast,” the company’s regional VP told a crowd of about 100 people who attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Hooks told the crowd, “Mebane is very well-known for its growth and location, but its high quality of life is what makes those first two things relevant.”
[Story continues below photos of the ribbon-cutting event.]
The construction of Medline’s distribution center came to fruition, in part, through the creation of the Buckhorn Economic Development District (EDD) – one of several EDDs created decades earlier by Orange County government officials – which with the extension of water/sewer infrastructure, made the location along West Ten Road viable for Medline, local officials noted Tuesday morning.
The Orange County commissioners’ vice chairman, Earl McKee, said during the ceremony that the Medline distribution center is the largest commercial building in Orange County and, with a $98 million tax value, will relieve pressure on that county’s residential taxpayers.
McKee noted that Medline was recently named by Forbes as one of America’s best large employers.
Medline representatives told The Alamance News Tuesday morning that approximately 260 employees are currently working at the distribution center in Mebane, and the company has reached hiring benchmarks outlined under a multi-jurisdictional incentives package the company was offered several years ago.
Medline is headquartered in Northfield, Illinois.
