TROY, Mich. — Tire Wholesalers Co. Inc. (TWi) expected to move out of its Troy headquarters before year-end into a new warehouse/distribution building under construction in Oak Park, Mich., with more than double its current footprint
The Troy-based company is taking the entire 275,000-sq.-ft. building being built on the site of the former Detroit Artillery Armory, expanding from 100,000-plus square feet at its current site. Oak Park is a community of about 30,000 residents located 15 miles north of downtown Detroit and 15 miles south of Troy.
Tire Wholesalers President Ross Kogel Jr. said the company moved into its existing space in 1992 and has added to it over the years. The new building is expected to be complete in December, giving the company more needed space and the ability to "optimize some technologies that allow us to operate even more efficiently than we do now."
Kogel declined to disclose Tire Wholesalers' employee count and said no determinations have been made on new hiring at the new facility.
He also noted that the new building is located within a couple of blocks of the company's first location, which was about 8,000 square feet in 1970.
"We are really excited to do it," Kogel said.
Tire Wholesalers has three other distribution centers, in Cadillac and Kalamazoo, Mich., and Hammond, Ind. It handles more than a dozen tire brands.
The developer of the new building, Minneapolis-based Opus Group, is also the contractor and architect.
The site is the former Detroit Artillery Armory property, which for years was considered a priority of Oak Park officials to redevelop into new uses.
The site, totaling about 100 acres, was unused since 2000 before Livonia-based Schostak Bros. & Co. purchased it for $3.7 million from the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs in 2003 and began selling it off to developers.
The property had included a 494,000-sq.-ft. building that during World War II was a machine gun manufacturing plant, which has been demolished. The property was turned over to the Michigan National Guard after the war.
Until the early 1990s, the site was used for training and storage, then just for storage until 2000.
