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Industrial park deal settled in Lordstown
By Kalea Hall
LORDSTOWN
Monday was a good day for the village of Lordstown and for the Mahoning Valley.
A new industrial park will be developed on 173.5 acres of vacant industrial property adjacent to the General Motors plant with potential to employ up to 1,500.
“We are always looking for jobs,” Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill said. “If you put people to work, it helps the entire Valley.”
RACER, or Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response Trust, announced Monday that it reached an agreement with NorthPoint Development for the purchase and development of the property.
When complete, the development is expected to cover 1.5 million square feet, Chad Meyer, NorthPoint president and chief operating officer, has said.
This is the second property NorthPoint has purchased from RACER Trust, which was created in March 2011 by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to clean up and position for redevelopment properties and other facilities owned by General Motors before its 2009 bankruptcy, according to the RACER website.
Last year, the Missouri-based NorthPoint industrial developer acquired land from RACER and constructed Central Industrial Park in Kansas City, Kan. The park was built on 80 vacant acres next to the GM Fairfax assembly plant and is expected to bring 2,000 jobs to the area.
The firm’s plan is to create the Lordstown park for GM suppliers.
“We had received interest from a couple of other parties who we vetted, and we chose not to go any further with them because we didn’t believe they would maximize the job-creation potential at the property,” said Bruce Rasher, redevelopment manager for RACER.
Rasher said the deal came together rather quickly after NorthPoint, a “reputable” company, took interest in the property.
“It was a relatively easy decision to make to pursue a transaction with them,” Rasher said.
NorthPoint also plans to develop manufacturing and logistics space for automotive suppliers in Tennessee and Indiana. The company owns about 8 million square feet of industrial space.
The Lordstown property was considered one of the prime industrial properties RACER had because of the investment made by the community and by GM there, Rasher said.
RACER has concluded approximately three dozen sales since it obtained hundreds of properties in 2011. It focuses on cleaning up the properties and finding a company that will bring the jobs in with the property. Buyers are measured by their new investment and job creation.