“This marks an exciting next step in our long-term growth strategy,” said a company statement. “We are proud to expand our presence in Forest Park, a community that has been part of Hillman’s history for decades, and we look forward to the opportunities this development brings for our company, employees, and customers.”
The Forest Park Planning Commission approved a development-plan revision recently for a 50-acre piece of the long-vacant mall to enable “Project Tetris,” an office and industrial building where one company will consolidate employees from three “nearby locations.”
Forest Park City Council will vote on the site plan change July 21.
“The redevelopment of the mall is one of the most complex projects in the city’s history,” wrote Christopher Anderson, director of community development for Forest Park, in a report recommending the plan revision. “At several points in the past three years, it appeared that the project was at a dead end. Fortunately, the developer has been diligent … and they have kept the project alive to bring the headquarters project to fruition, which had long been the city’s preference.”
Hillwood Investment Properties, a Texas-based Perot company, has a contract to purchase 55 acres from World Properties Inc., a New York company that’s owned the mall since 2010. Hillwood also agreed to purchase $10.5 million in bonds that were used to finance the mall’s last major renovation in 2004.
Cincinnati-based Hillman Group is one of the nation’s largest hardware distributors, shipping nails, screws and fasteners to hundreds of retail outlets in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The publicly traded company has about 4,500 employees and annual sales of $1.5 billion. It relocated its headquarters to Forest Park in 2023 and has been looking to consolidate some of its operations at a larger site.
Both companies expressed an interest in partnering on a new corporate headquarters in November, when the Butler County Land Bank pledged a $7.9 million state grant to Forest Fair Mall’s demolition.
But the project seemed to shift away from that plan when Hillwood submitted plans for three large industrial buildings on the site in February.
Forest Park’s development agreement offered property-tax abatements for either development. But the subsidies were larger for a “primary operations” facility, which it defined as an “executive, operations, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution center to be leased to a single, third party.”
The new site plan calls for a 715,736-square-foot building facing I-275 near Gilmore Road. Renderings depict a two-story office space in the building’s southwest corner and room for a 162,400-square-foot expansion to the east. It isn’t clear how many jobs would relocate to the site, but the site plan calls for 743 parking spaces north, south and west of the building.
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