GE Lighting’s owner selling Nela Park in East Cleveland, closing 2 Ohio plants

On Mar 11, 2022

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The owner of GE Lighting, once part of General Electric and a major employer in the region, said Wednesday that it plans to sell historic Nela Park in East Cleveland to an affiliate of a Milwaukee-based real estate firm.

The announcement came the same day that the company told its employees it planned to close plants in Bucyrus and Logan and lay off an unspecified number of employees in U.S., Canada and China.

The sale of the 92-acre East Cleveland park to a company tied to Phoenix Investors is scheduled to close at the end of this month, GE Lighting spokesman Ben Sabol said. He said GE Lighting, which will remain at the complex as a tenant, is not divulging the terms of the sale.

“It’s not just a chance for the park to regain its former glory,” but GE Lighting’s decision to stay will also ensure continued income tax revenue for the cash-strapped city, Sabol said. New tenants would only grow that income tax base and spending in the city, he added.

Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer has reached out to an executive at Phoenix Investors, as well as East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King.

Phoenix founder and Chairman Frank Crivello said in a news release that “revitalization is one of our core values; we plan to both honor the Park’s history and embrace its future with thoughtful renovations while attracting high-quality tenants to the area.”

The Noble Road complex was built in 1913 and is named for the National Electric Lamp Association, owned by GE. It widely considered the first industrial park but is perhaps best known to people in the region for the lavish holiday lights displays put on for nearly a century.

It was once home to many jobs as well – a 1975 Plain Dealer photo caption said 2,800 people worked in the park at the time – and like the inner-ring suburb has seen an exodus in recent decades.

That exodus will continue this month. GE spun off its lighting division in 2020. About 100 employees of commercial lighting company GE Current, now owned by Daintree, will move to new offices in Beachwood, company spokesman Jim Benson said, adding that about a dozen lab workers will remain at Nela Park.

However, GE Lighting, the consumer lighting business that the Boston-based Savant Systems bought in 2020, will be the only company with a major presence at the sprawling property.

GE Lighting also announced Wednesday that it would close plants in Bucyrus and Logan and eliminate jobs around the world. Both plants manufactured linear fluorescent lamps, for which demand has plummeted, and halogen bulbs, according to the company.

Phoenix owns the buildings and land for both plants. All of Wednesday’s announcements were made “to reduce organizational complexity and refocus on its long-term portfolio and market demand,” according to a company statement.

Sabol said GE Lighting currently has about 700 employees, 250 of which work at Nela Park.

He said GE Lighting plans to consolidate its footprint in Nela Park when the complex is sold. Instead of spreading out among most of the 20 Georgian Revival-style buildings, the company will instead take up about 20% the space.

The lighting company tried without success to attract additional tenants to Nela Park, Sabol said. Phoenix has done similar work on other industrial parks in the U.S., and Sabol specifically cited the firm’s purchase last year of a 130-acre complex in Endicott, New York, once exclusively used by computer giant IBM.

GE Current’s move from Nela Park to Commerce Park seen as jolt to Beachwood’s economy

GE selling century-old lighting unit to Savant Systems