A local company that repackages DVDs, CDs, and audio books and sells them primarily to libraries nationwide will build a new headquarters and warehouse to accommodate its burgeoning business and need for more space.

Midwest Tape LLC, located at 6950 Hall St. in Holland, broke ground Thursday on a 135,000-square-foot complex that is less than two miles from its current location.

The new location is on a 20-acre site, at 7904 Airport Hwy. is in the Wolf Creek Business Park in Holland.

John Eldred, Midwest Tape’s founder and owner, said the project will cost $12 million and be completed next spring. Rudolph Libbe Group is the project’s general contractor.

The complex will have a 100,800-square-foot warehouse and a 34,560-square-foot office building. But Mr. Eldred said the site offers room to expand.

Midwest Tape has about 320 employees but is continually adding workers as the business grows, the owner said.

Unlike the retail market for CDs and DVDs, which is shrinking because of the rise of Internet-based content which prompted the demise of video store chains such as Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video, the market for recorded media packaged and sold to libraries remains strong and is increasing, Mr. Eldred said.

“It is not what you would think,” said Mr. Eldred, who got into the video business in 1983 by opening a video store, Sights and Sounds, in Toledo’s Miracle Mile Shopping Plaza.

“As all the videos stores have closed, people are going to the libraries more and more for videos. Cuyahoga [County] Public Library still rents out VHS tapes. So [the library] is the only place that a family can take their children and say, ‘Go pick 10 movies out,’ and then take them home,” Mr. Eldred said.

As his business grew after its start 25 years ago, Midwest Tape moved to a 10,000 square foot building in Holland, then a 40,000 square foot space on Hall Street, later expanding it to 100,000 square feet.

Midwest Tape, which does just over $100 million in sales annually and sells products in several states, now duplicates just over 20,000 DVDs, CDs, or audio books a week. It has satellite offices in Chicago and Toronto and soon will expand to service customers in England and Australia, Mr. Eldred said.

“We keep expanding. We started out in the back of my video store ... and now we ship about 100,000 a week in DVDs, CDs and audio books, and that keeps growing. Then we have our [Hoopla Digital] digital delivery service that keeps growing, so we need the space,” he said.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published September 25, 2015, 4:00 a.m.