SPRINGDALE, Ohio - A pair of new industrial developments could bring new jobs to Springdale, adding more than 1.2 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space to Cincinnati’s northern suburbs.
Ridgeline Property Group recently obtained zoning approval for a 15-acre development that would bring a 236,000-square-foot industrial building to the Pictoria Corporate complex at Springdale Pike and I-275.
Springdale’s Planning Commission will consider a zoning change Thursday night for a roughly 100-acre project at a former golf course for GE employees at the intersection of Princeton Pike and Crescentville Road. CM Capital Partners in Springdale wants to construct five buildings and a combined 1 million square feet.
“Any of us who follow this know the industrial market is booming right now,” said Springdale Economic Development Director Christine Russell. “There’s a lot of demand for it and we are optimistic that we’re going to get high-quality developments on both of these sites and high-quality companies to move in.”
The growth of e-commerce is fueling demand for new warehouse and distribution centers and Cincinnati’s northern suburbs are an ideal place for such development, thanks to strong east-west highway connections, said Doug Armbruster, senior vice president for IDI Gazely.
Armbruster has developed more than 20 million square feet of industrial space in his career, including 4 million at the Monroe Industrial Park, which signed a million-square-foot lease to Hayneedle.com, an online furniture retailer acquired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. last year.
The project received a six-year, two percent tax credit from the state of Ohio after Hayneedle promised to create 104 new full-time jobs paying an average of $30,769 per year.
“There’s always room for additional growth,” said Armbruster, who expects to add another 1.4 million square feet to his Park North at Monroe project, near the intersection of I-75 and State Route 63. He doesn’t expect the new Springdale projects to hamper his plans for Monroe.
“There’s so much local business in West Chester and Sharonville,” Armbruster said. “There’s a lot of tenants in that 100 to 200 thousand-square-foot range. I think they’ll be in a good position to capture just the natural growth.”
The GE Park development was initially planned as a 1.3 million square-foot project, but a legal battle between potential developers forced a revision. Vandercar Capital LLC sued the General Electric Employees Activities Association of Evendale, claiming it reneged on a deal to sell its 103-acre golf course site to Madisonville-based Vandercar.
The case is still on appeal. Vandercar has separately purchased an adjoining five-acre site that forced CM Capital to downsize its original site plan, Russell said.
The city has offered no incentives to either developer and hasn’t received any information about potential tenants for the Pictoria and GE Park projects.
