New life for Louisville office building. Different owner, more tenants at KMG Center

Edd Pritchard, The Repository
·2 min read
Klingelhofer Management Group, which has a number of businesses, has purchased the office building in the Energy Drive business park and renamed it KMG Center. The building originally was home to Chesapeake Energy and later used by Encino. It now will be home for KMG businesses, with space available for other tenants.
Klingelhofer Management Group, which has a number of businesses, has purchased the office building in the Energy Drive business park and renamed it KMG Center. The building originally was home to Chesapeake Energy and later used by Encino. It now will be home for KMG businesses, with space available for other tenants.

LOUISVILLE – A number of companies are relocating into the former Ohio headquarters of Chesapeake Energy, and other businesses are being offered a chance to join.

Klingelhofer Management Group, or KMG, is moving its headquarters to the office building, which is owned by an investor group called 2321 Energy Drive-Louisville.

KMG will bring several of its businesses to the location at 3588 Beck Ave. SW, which has been renamed KMG Center.

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Four KMG entities — Alliance Crane & Rigging, DirtWorks Drainage, Advanced TechWorks and TerraWorks Property Management — are relocating to the Energy Drive property.

A fifth company, Special Power Sources LLC, currently is based in Alliance, will relocate to the facility soon, KMG officials said.

Family-owned KMG began when the Klingelhofers started DirtWorks Drainage in 2006. According to the DirtWorks website, Kurt and Diane Klingelhofer have been involved with agricultural services for more than 30 years and four of their sons are involved with the companies.

KMG Center provides the Klingelhofers with a location where they can centralize operations, said Deanna Corll, KMG's vice president for business management and development.

Meanwhile, the building has space for other companies.

Office space is available, and Corll said several tenants have expressed an interest. Another option is leasing co-working space. The building also has space available for corporate and training events, civic meetings and social gatherings such as weddings.

"We already have several exciting events scheduled for later this year," Corll said.

Louisville officials are happy the building, which has been vacant since the coronavirus pandemic, has been purchased and is being occupied.

"It's great to see some new life in there," said Tom Pukys, city manager.

Chesapeake Energy announced plans for the five-story building in July 2012. It opened in June 2014, serving as regional headquarters for Chesapeake's Utica Shale drilling operation.

Eventually Chesapeake would sell it Utica Shale holdings to Encino in a $2 billion deal that closed in November 2018.

Encino used the building until March 2020 when workers headed home because of the pandemic. Encino's workforce stayed at home, and the company decided it would sell the office building it no longer used.

The building anchors a business park that Louisville worked with property owners Groffre Investments to develop. The project included construction of Energy Drive, which connected Beck Avenue on the west to Route 44 on the east.

Groffre Investments owns most of the property in the business park and is working to get it developed. "There's just great potential there," Pukys said.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Louisville building renamed KMG Center, will house multiple companies