This three-decade-old corporate headquarters building for Moen was refurbished only several years ago. Community development officials believe it is a marketable property and hopefully will attract new users soon to fill a void in the city’s financial ability to provide public services (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
NE Ohio not given chance to compete for HQ
When the conglomerate parent of faucet and fixture-maker Moen told the world via press release on Jan. 22 that it was consolidating its various brand headquarters to suburban Chicago, it was also notifying all of the Ohio-based economic development organizations about the move for the first time.
It didn’t matter if it was the Ohio Department of Development, Team NEO or the city of North Olmsted. None of them were given the chance to compete for the headquarters or even to retain some of its back-office jobs here, said Max Upton, North Olmsted’s director of community and economic development. Instead, all 350 of the HQ jobs are leaving. In some years, Moen has ranked as the city’s largest employer.
“We didn’t even get a chance to be at the table about them possibly staying in Northeast Ohio,” Upton said in an interview with NEOtrans. “We (city officials) didn’t receive any indication that they were leaving until the morning of” the public announcement.
NEOtrans, which broke the story locally about Moen’s headquarters being consolidated with Fortune Brands’ other affiliates in Deerfield, IL, also heard from sources that business retention and attraction nonprofit Team NEO and the Ohio Department of Development had learned about the move from the press release.
But even then, the release wasn’t clear about what jobs were moving. HQ employees were told about the move the day before the press release was issued. Many were given incentives to relocate while those who declined the offer would be given severance packages. Upton said that the state of Illinois gave Fortune Brands an offer that would have been pretty tough to beat.
The Millennium Place office complex on Country Club Boulevard in North Olmsted housed Moen offices as the company had outgrown its headquarters on the other side of Interstate 480. The city arranged a grant program with Moen if it maintained enough payroll at Millennium Place but the company didn’t hit those targets, a city official said (Google).
“I don’t know you offer more than a 100 percent job creation tax credit on the new jobs added,” Upton said.
That was what the state of Illinois gave Fortune Brands from its Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) program for not only bringing Moen’s headquarters but also Master Lock’s from Deer Lake, WI, a southern suburb of Milwaukee one hour from Deerfield. The headquarters of House of Rohl, which makes kitchen and bath fixtures, will move from Irvine, CA to Deerfield, too.
Fortune Brands has been headquartered in Deerfield but will move to a new location, the former Horizon Therapeutics campus near the interchange of Interstates 94 and 294. The site became available when Horizon moved its headquarters to Ireland. The site is also accessed by Tekada Parkway, named after a Japanese pharmaceutical company that moved its US headquarters from Deerfield to Boston starting in 2018.
Upton said that, even before the move was announced, he and other economic development officials from Ohio tried to develop a rapport with Fortune Brands’ leadership — but to no avail.
“We had made attempts to speak with them,” Upton said. “We were unable to get a meeting scheduled with the decision makers.”
Moen’s headquarters is a familiar site to anyone who travels Interstate 480 as the building overlooks the highway. That could make it an attractive office building for a new user seeking a high-profile, accessible location (Google).
“We have a huge opportunity ahead of us,” said Fortune Brands Chief Executive Officer Nicholas Fink in a written statement. “Bringing together associates from across all our brands and functions into one state-of-the-art campus will help us to bring innovations and products to life faster, while also making the organization more efficient and aligned.”
Although Fink was born in South Africa, he became an American citizen and grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He graduated from Chicago’s Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
With the North Olmsted headquarters due to empty out by April 2026, it will hit the city’s $30 million annual budget with a loss of up to $1 million per year in income tax revenues, Upton said. The building and land generated $573,948.66 in property taxes last year and $395,960.32 this year, county records show. But the property taxes will continue to be paid to schools, libraries and parks as long as the property remains in private hands.
North Olmsted Mayor Nicole Dailey Jones and Upton are scheduled to meet with Moen President Kevin Campbell next month to plot a new future for the headquarters building located at 25300 Al Moen Dr.
“With the right user, it could be an attractive building,” Upton said, noting that the city will move forward despite the impact the income tax loss might have on city services. “It certainly is a bite but it’s not going to sink us. We’re going to work hard to fill that gap.”
In some years, Moen has ranked as North Olmsted’s largest employer. Their office building will likely go on the market although city officials will be meeting soon with Moen executives to chart a new course for the property (Google).
North Olmsted in 1994 attracted Moen’s headquarters from Elyria by offering a 15-year property tax abatement. The company retained an aging manufacturing facility in Elyria until 2008 when the decline of the housing market forced its closure and 80 workers were laid off. Moen has manufacturing facilities in China, Mexico and Canada. Worldwide, Moen has about 2,400 employees and an annual revenue of approximately $1 billion.
Moen was founded by Alfred Moen in Seattle in 1937. He moved the company to Elyria in 1956 when Moen became part of Stanadyne. Forstmann-Little & Company acquired Stanadyne in 1988. Fortune Brands purchased Forstmann-Little & Company, and then spun off its related product lines to form Fortune Brands Home & Security in 2011.
Prior to the pandemic, Moen had more than 600 people working here, including at its 122,000 square-foot headquarters which has offices and lab space. The HQ building wasn’t big enough for the growing company, Upton said. So Moen leased another 45,000 square feet of office space at The Millennium Place office complex on Country Club Boulevard, on the other side of Interstate 480.
After the pandemic, and despite remote working, NEOtrans had learned in 2021 that Moen was continuing to look at its office options, including expanding its existing building, relocating to Downtown Cleveland, or moving its headquarters out of Greater Cleveland altogether.
Instead, the company began to shrink its HQ staffing in recent years to its current level of 350 people. In 2017, the city offered Moen an annual $115,000 job retention grant over seven years if it hit $8 million in payroll at the Millennium Place buildings in any of those years. But, despite that incentive, Upton said Moen wasn’t “hitting the numbers” necessary to receive the grant.
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