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“This is not about building the noun but building the verb.”
It was a bold statement from Elanco Animal Health CEO Jeff Simmons in 2022, as he broke ground for his company’s new global headquarters on the site of a razed auto parts manufacturing facility on Indianapolis’ near-west side. There, surrounded by gravel-strewn land and weeds, he shared a vision for how this corporate headquarters could breathe life into the abandoned parcel and become a catalyst for a new epicenter of animal health, creating a place where innovators, academics and students would work together to create innovations that improve the lives of animals around the globe.
Three years later, Jeff’s vision is becoming reality.
This week, the company officially opened its three-building, 200,000-square-foot global headquarters campus on the site. Where General Motors once stamped auto parts, scientists, veterinarians and technologists will now invent and advance new medicines to make animals healthier—everything from dogs and cats to cows and pigs.
The Elanco headquarters is the cornerstone for creating the epicenter of innovation Jeff envisioned years ago and builds on a series of moves the company has made since it began its headquarters project. In May 2024, Jeff and Purdue University President Mung Chiang signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to make the former stamping plant site “a globally recognized research innovation district dedicated to optimizing the health of people, animals, plants and the planet.” This August, Elanco announced it had acquired 56 acres adjacent to its new headquarters to accelerate that vision.
The next chapter of Elanco and innovation at the site is yet to be written, but the company’s history offers a view of what could come.
Once the animal health subsidiary of human pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., Elanco became a stand-alone public company through a 2018 initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. With Jeff at the helm, the company moved quickly to diversify its animal health portfolio and in 2019 announced plans to acquire Bayer Animal Health, expanding Elanco’s reach beyond livestock and into pet health. The move made the combined company the world’s second-largest independent animal health company.
Fresh off its acquisition, Elanco sought to consolidate its global operations and conducted a multi-state search to select a site for its expanded headquarters. In December 2020, the company announced it would move from its Greenfield headquarters to Indianapolis and make the former GM stamping plant site the home for its global headquarters.
At every step, Jeff and the team have moved boldly, convinced that building the next chapter of the company would require big moves. He made them. He took the company public. He executed the giant acquisition of Bayer Animal Health. He built one of the first headquarters designed post-COVID—created not with cubicles but with spaces to connect and inspire collaboration and innovation. Now, as Elanco opens its new headquarters, Jeff and his team are making another bold move as they breathe new life into Indianapolis’ near-west side and usher in an era of innovation and economic growth.
Let’s welcome Elanco as the newest public company headquartered in our city, and inspired by Jeff’s bold statement, take our own big steps to build the next chapter of Indiana’s economy to be even stronger.
“This is not about building the noun but building the verb.”•
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Frazier is president of IBJ Media. Reach him at [email protected].
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