TOLEDO, Ohio — It's been 17 years since North Towne Mall closed its doors leaving the north Toledo plot vacant for years.
Thursday the city celebrated the groundbreaking of the $84.6 million Toledo Trade Center that will be there.
City leaders, state officials and developers were at the property that was sold to Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development in October 2021. Its Regional Vice President, Marc Warner, said this will be their first project in Toledo.
"This speculative industrial project fills a void in the city of Toledo. It's going to bring space for automotive users, distributors, e-commerce distributors, potentially light manufacturing users," Warner said.
The project is planned to create over 564 direct and indirect jobs and is anticipated to generate more than $11.84 million in permanent wages.
Warner said the Toledo Trade Center is going to provide top-of-the-line, class-A industrial products, and it will be made up of three buildings of more than 850-thousand square feet across 58 acres and will allow for easy regional and local industrial distribution.
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said the lot that has been abandoned for over a decade is another part of Toledo's story of industrial growth.
"Hundreds of jobs, good-paying, union jobs are going to sprout up in this field where for the last 15 years, we've had nothing but vacant land," he said.
The land was helped funded through Ohio's Brownfield Remediation Project where Ohio's Director of Development, Lydia Mihalik, said the General Assembly and Gov. Mike Dewine prioritized $350 million for projects statewide.
NorthPoint Development said they officially broke ground on the first building a few weeks ago, and they plan to finish the project by next summer in June 2023.