Heidelberg Distributing buys former Cooper Tire building

Heidelberg Distributing Company has purchased the 779,000-square-foot building formerly occupied by the Cooper Tire & Rubber Company at 3601 Dryden Road in Moraine and will move from its current location on Leo Street in Dayton to the former tire company building, Heidelberg CEO Vail Miller Jr. announced this afternoon.

The purchase price was $7.25 million, according to Montgomery County property records.

“We are still studying the best use of the Dryden Road facility for Heidelberg,” Miller said in a news release. “The huge amount of square footage opens doors for us regionally and offers opportunities for our supplier partners, whether it is for storage, cross-docking or delivery logistics. The direct access to I-75 and interstate visibility is a plus.”

Covington Capital, a real estate development and investment company, bought and improved the Cooper Tire building in 2008, and managed it along with the city of Moraine, Heidelberg officials said. Covington Capital has purchased Heidelberg’s 244,000-square-foot Leo Street facility and is currently seeking a tenant or tenants for the seven buildings on the property.

Heidelberg was founded in Dayton nearly 75 years ago and now operates facilities in eight markets in Ohio and Kentucky. The Dayton operation has been located on Leo Street in north Dayton since 1956.

Family-owned Heidelberg is one of the Midwest’s largest distributors of beers, wines, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages. It sells 6 million cases a year of Anheuser-Busch InBev products, and last November, added Yuengling beer to the stable of products that it distributes.

In addition to Dayton, Heidelberg operates facilities in Cincinnati, Evendale, Columbus, Cleveland, Lorain, Toledo and Hebron, Kentucky. The company employs 1,400 and serves more than 20,000 retail accounts throughout Ohio and Kentucky. Heidelberg was named the 14th largest U.S. beer distributor by trade magazine Beverage World in 2011.

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