Trucking company YRC Worldwide Inc. said Thursday it is selling the former Roadway headquarters in Akron to the developer of the new Goodyear headquarters and expects up to 100 people will lose their jobs in upcoming months.
About 100 other YRC Worldwide employees will transfer to office space at company truck terminals in nearby Copley and Richfield, with another 50 getting offers to relocate to jobs in Kansas, South Dakota and Iowa.
The company said as many as 50 to 100 Akron jobs will be eliminated at the end of March, depending on which employees accept relocation. The YRC employees who lose their jobs will get severance packages.
“It really comes down to an economics issue,” said Jeff Rogers, the new president of YRC. “We’re still losing money.”
Rogers, who visited Akron on Thursday to announce the decision in person to employees, said the company will have about 4,000 employees in Ohio after the former Roadway headquarters is sold. Rogers also met Thursday afternoon with Akron and Summit County public officials to explain the company’s decision, saying he owed it to the community given Roadway’s lengthy history in Akron dating to 1930.
“We expect to remain a big part of the community,” he said.
As recently as 2008, YRC had as many as 2,000 people in the Akron area, including hundreds more employees at the former Roadway headquarters.
The buyer of the 270,000-square-foot building off Gorge Boulevard will be Stuart Lichter, the developer behind the Goodyear headquarters project. Lichter and his California-based company, Industrial Realty Group, own a significant number of other Akron properties and in recent weeks added to holdings at the Lockheed Martin campus next to Akron Fulton International Airport.
Because the sale has not yet closed, neither Lichter nor YRC disclosed the purchase price. Summit County appraised the building and land at nearly $8.5 million.
In October 2009, YRC Worldwide, based in Overland Park, Kan., announced it was putting the former Roadway headquarters up for sale, with an asking price then of $8 million. The property was listed with commercial estate company NAI Cummins, which offered it as office space for institutional, government or research and development use. Lease rates ranged from $6.50 to $8.50 a square foot.
Lichter said once the deal closes, his company will “freshen up” the former Roadway headquarters and get it ready for multi-tenant use.
“We have a couple of potential tenants,” he said. “We believe it’s a good building.”
Lichter said he and YRC began negotiations about six months ago and initially discussed a sale-leaseback, in which he would buy the building and then rent space to YRC.
“It evolved to where we’re just buying the building,” he said.
A part of the building can be used as a data center, Lichter said.
Rogers held a town hall-style meeting in the early afternoon with employees in the Gorge Boulevard building. He said he spoke for 10 to 15 minutes and then took questions.
“This kind of thing you do not flower up,” he said.
Employees were given notice several months ago about the possible future of the building at another town hall-style meeting, he said.
“In the situation we’re in, everything is on the table,” he said.
The Akron employees largely did back-office operations that could be duplicated elsewhere, including YRC’s corporate headquarters in Kansas, Rogers said.
Rogers was named YRC president in September after heading the YRC Worldwide subsidiary called Holland. He previously was chief financial officer of YRC Regional Transportation, of which Holland is one unit. His career includes working at Yellow Transportation and United Parcel Service, plus being a U.S. Army Ranger.
The former Roadway has a lengthy history in Akron, going back to its founding as Roadway Services in 1930.
The company’s legacy includes the Akron-based GAR Foundation, set up by Roadway co-founder Galen Roush and his second wife, Ruth, in 1967. The foundation currently has about $140 million in assets and has distributed $200 million over the years in grants to the community.
To raise much-needed cash, YRC Worldwide in recent years has been selling off real estate holdings, including its corporate headquarters in Kansas. YRC is leasing its headquarters now.
The Akron company called Roadway Express built the headquarters at 1077 Gorge Blvd. in 1962 and spent $14 million to expand it by 180,000 square feet in 1986. The building is near state Route 8 and North High School.
YRC Worldwide was formed in 2003 when Yellow Freight bought Roadway for $1.1 billion. The large trucking company has struggled financially, including losing large amounts of money the last several years and has flirted with bankruptcy while overhauling its finances and operations.
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com
