Fenley - News

Kroger buys office building, will move local headquarters there

(Louisville, KY) Cincinnati-based grocer The Kroger Co. has purchased an 85,000-square-foot building in the Hurstbourne Green business park that it plans to use to house its Mid South division office, which is based in Louisville.

The two-story building at 1600 Ormsby Station Court currently is vacant, according to Tim McGurk, Kroger's manager of customer relations for the Mid South division. It formerly housed a call center.

Kroger closed on the purchase Jan. 7, McGurk said. The purchase price was $8.95 million, according to information found on the Jefferson County Clerk's Web site.

Louisville-based Fenley Real Estate was the seller of the property.

Some 340 Kroger associates will work at the Hurstbourne Green facility, known as Bellevoir Crossing, McGurk said in an e-mail response to Business First questions.

Kroger will move its merchandising, operations, human resources, real estate, facility engineering, risk management, community relations, advertising and information technology departments to the site.

The Kroger departments currently are split between two leased sites on Linn Station Road. Those leases expire at the end of June, according to McGurk.

The building will require some renovations before the move, he said. Kroger plans to occupy the building by mid-summer.

Several sites were considered before Kroger moved forward with the purchase, McGurk said.

"After comparing numerous office buildings, Kroger's real estate team determined that the Ormsby Station site offered the best combination of size, location and price," he said in the e-mail statement.

Rick Ashton and Jeff Dreher, office brokers with the Louisville real estate firm Commercial Kentucky Inc., represented Fenley Real Estate in its sale of the office building, which was constructed in 1999.

David Fenley, president and CEO of the commercial real estate firm, said his company sold the Hurstbourne Green building so it could concentrate on its Class A office holdings.

No other buildings in the firm's portfolio are for sale, he said.

As reported in BUSINESS FIRST Online, January 08, 2008