UPS to occupy 225,000-square-foot building on Glenwood Road
Nov. 6—A new United Parcel Service facility will be the cornerstone of a nascent industrial park off Glenwood Road in Rossford for which development is starting to move, Rossford Mayor Neil MacKinnon announced Friday.
The mayor said he did not yet have details about how many jobs the 225,000-square-foot facility will generate, but that Scannell Properties, the Indianapolis-based developer of about 350 acres in that area, had confirmed UPS as the occupant of one of two buildings for which slab construction is planned this fall, followed by vertical structures next spring.
The second building's potential occupants haven't been identified yet — "they have interested parties, but they're not sharing this information with us," Mayor MacKinnon said.
But the mayor expects the overall development to employ about 2,000 people when it's fully built out, along with construction jobs to get there. Except for about 40 acres northwest of Mandell and Glenwood roads that are still in Perrysburg Township, the industrial-park site was annexed into Rossford about four years ago, he said.
The UPS facility will occupy about 10 acres in the city portion.
Also in the works, but farther south and separate, is a new Murphy Tractor & Equipment building that at 30,000 square feet will become the region's largest John Deere dealer, Mayor MacKinnon said.
"It's just a great time," Mr. MacKinnon said. "There are going to be a lot of jobs and opportunities for people that haven't been here before."
Todd Audet, a former Ohio Department of Transportation district deputy director whom Mayor MacKinnon hired last year as Rossford's economic development director, said the site's development has involved a cooperative effort of Rossford, the township, the Wood County Port Authority, the Rossford school district, and Wood County Engineer John Musteric's office.
A project-development process is under way, Mr. Audet said, to build a roundabout at Glenwood and Buck roads, an intersection now governed by a traffic signal, to handle trucks and other traffic the overall development is expected to generate. Glenwood will also need improvement, he said, but that is more practical than what Lime City Road, the next through road to the west, would need to handle the site's traffic if it were set up for that role.
The site is attractive for development because of its north end's access to I-75 via the Buck interchange and the Ohio Turnpike and State Rt. 795 to its south, Mr. Audet said. He said he has been working with the developers on plans for the site's roadway system so that it doesn't become gridlocked.
The Buck interchange shouldn't need to be modified if the roundabout at Buck and Glenwood is built, he said, because the latter would keep traffic moving there rather than backing up into the interchange area when a light turns red.
