Former Goodyear Plant Hits Market With $9.2M Price By BRIAN PEARSON, Business Editor   |   Apr 02, 2009

The former Goodyear plant in Tyler will formally hit the real estate market today with a $9.2 million price tag, said a Tyler property broker assisting with marketing.

The property has 1.12 million square feet of building space on 155 acres, said Mark Whatley of Burns Commercial Properties.

Whatley said the property is ideal for "a warehouse/distribution-type user," but the site's days of making things might be over.

"The likelihood of us getting a manufacturer is pretty small," he said, adding the site, starting today, will be marketed nationally.

Whatley said the property has been readied for sale.

"It is a very well-maintained facility," he said. "The building is in really good condition.
(Goodyear) took very good care that they didn't have any environmental or hazardous-waste problems with the facility."

Goodyear cut 700 jobs in Tyler in early 2008, followed by another 200 cuts later in the year.
The last of the operations, mixing, stopped in September.

"It's a major deal for the community to lose something like that," Whatley said.

Negotiations with two potential suitors for the former tire plant fell flat last year, said Tom Mullins, president and CEO of the Tyler Economic Development Council.

The prospects for the plant, which ceased operations in September, were a Downey, Calif.-based company called IRG and Titan Tire, headquartered in Quincy, Ill., Mullins said.

Interest from Titan, which could have used Goodyear manufacturing equipment and possibly hired back displaced employees, disappeared, so attention turned to IRG, but that interest has waned as well, he said. IRG took over a former Goodyear plant in Alabama and divided it up for multiple uses, he said.

The Tyler property should be attractive to prospective buyers, Mullins said.

"You've got a lot of open floor space with fairly high ceilings," he said. "There are lots of dock doors for loading and unloading and great highway access."

He added that the property will be close to a new western section of Loop 49 connecting with Interstate 20 perhaps within five years.

The site has utility infrastructure to support a heavy user of electricity, gas and sewer lines, he said. As Goodyear did, a company could tap into the nearby Lake Bellwood for water needs, he said.
Ed Markey, Goodyear spokesman, said most of the tire-production equipment has been removed and the property cleaned up.

A former medical center at the site will serve as human-resources and union offices through July 2010, Markey said.

Mullins noted that the Tyler area has seen success stories when it comes to finding buyers of large properties.

A former 600,000-square-foot distribution home for Southland, which has since changed its company name to 7-Eleven, sat empty for only a year in the early 1990s until Brookshire's bought it and converted it into its bakery and ice cream operations, he said.

A 135,000-square-food former facility for Dearborn Brass, a wholesale plumbing products supplier, sat idle for about three years before Hebb Industries, in 2002, converted it into a manufacturer and assembler of exercise treadmills. That facility, part of the Nautilus group, was closed in early 2007 and has been idle since then, Mullins said.

Almost a third of the 1.4 million square feet of building space has been cleared, said Tom Mullins, president and CEO of the Tyler Economic Development Council.

According to the IRG Web site, the company, which has been involved in projects in 22 states, specializes in redeveloping manufacturing, military, government and other closed facilities. IRG's portfolio includes more than 50 million square feet at 70 projects nationwide.

The company, according to its Web site, recently purchased properties from companies such as General Motors, Spiegel, Northrop Grumman, Levi's, United Technologies, U.S. Army and the Veterans Administration.