Riddell pays $30M for new facility

Transfer includes land, building

The new Riddell sports equipment facility has sold for $30.65 million, according to records from the Lorain County Auditor’s Office.

LCN RDL Cleveland (OH) LLC bought the property at 7501 Performance Lane in North Ridgeville, for its new facility, where the company will move from Elyria.

The seller was Scannell Properties #277 LLC of Indianapolis, according to the auditor’s records.

Sale documents were dated March 31 and the needed paperwork came through the auditor’s office on April 28.

Riddell’s new facility is 347,205 square feet and sits adjacent to the Ohio Turnpike.

In June 2016, the company announced it was moving out of its Elyria facility at 38889 Center Ridge Road.

A month later, Riddell broke ground for the new site.

The new facility will continue activities currently completed in Elyria, as well as full-size helmets for its licensed collectibles business and collectible helmets, select football products and some apparel when it relocates its consumer business from Rantoul, Ill., according to plans from the company.

The sale price was one of the largest in recent memory for the county, said Lorain County Auditor Craig Snodgrass.

In January, Midway Market Square Elyria LLC paid $20.5 million for six parcels around 110 Market Drive in Elyria, according to the auditor’s records.

Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC this year paid more than $4.5 million for 58 acres in Avon, and some retailers have spent millions of dollars for land in that city.

However, those transactions dealt with empty land and did not include buildings, according to the auditor’s records.

“So, we’ve had some pretty sizable sales already this year,” Snodgrass said. “This (Riddell) has got

to rank as one of the larger sales we’ve had in the last couple years.”

The Riddell transaction included $122,600 conveyance fee to the county auditor; that money will go for Lorain County’s general fund, which pays for many of the government services of the county, Snodgrass said.

The amount is significant, Snodgrass said, because when real estate sales dried up during the Great Recession, there were times the county struggled to get $122,000

in conveyance fees for a month.