A developer has bought 40.59 acres in Bowling Green’s Woodbridge Business Park for $2.23 million, advancing a proposed automotive plant that local reporting says could bring 481 jobs to Wood County — though the manufacturer that would occupy the plant has still not been publicly named.
Wood County auditor records list a Nov. 12 sale of the parcel from Ohio Logistics to Bowling Green 40 Owner LLC for $2,233,550. The auditor still lists the vacant land as 0 E. Poe Road, and BG Independent News reported that the proposed plant’s address is 2611 Woodstream Drive, east of Dunbridge Road between Poe Road and Bowling Green Road East.
The purchase price marks a sharp rise in the site’s value in a little over two years. Ohio Logistics bought the same property in July 2024 for $1,420,650, according to the auditor’s records — meaning the parcel changed hands this week for $812,900 more than its previous sale.
BG Independent News reported on Nov. 11 that the project would bring 481 jobs, more than $100 million in investment and $31 million in annual payroll. Under the plan BG Independent described, the developer would build the facility and lease it to the manufacturer, with a formal announcement of the company expected in mid-December.
The incentive package now moving through City Hall is a large one. BG Independent News reported that the proposal includes a 100% property-tax exemption on new construction and improvements for 15 years, and that Bowling Green City Council would consider the agreement on Monday, Nov. 16.
Because a full abatement would otherwise leave the schools whole-cloth out of the new tax revenue, separate payments would compensate them during the exemption. BG Independent reported initial annual amounts of $293,042 for Bowling Green City Schools and $26,454 for Penta Career Center, subject to adjustment over the life of the deal.
The Bowling Green Board of Education’s Nov. 10 agenda identifies a 15-year “donation agreement” among the city, the district and Bowling Green 40 Owner LLC, with the first payment due April 1, 2028. The posted agenda references an accompanying agreement, but that exhibit was not included in the public document, so the full terms have not yet been available for residents to read.
The structure of the school payments matters to how residents will judge the deal. Under a traditional abatement, a school district simply loses the tax revenue a new plant would have generated for the life of the exemption. The donation agreement in the board’s Nov. 10 agenda is designed to replace at least part of that money with direct payments, starting April 1, 2028 — a date that suggests construction and occupancy are expected to ramp up during 2027, though no official timetable has been released.
The land purchase is the latest step in a busy stretch of investment news for the city, which recently celebrated the opening of the $1.5 million Four Corners Center in a restored downtown building. Across Northwest Ohio, communities are competing hard for exactly this kind of project — Lima just landed five federal Opportunity Zone designations that take effect in 2027.
For Bowling Green, the stakes run in both directions. A 481-job plant with a $31 million payroll would rank among the largest private employers in Wood County and would deepen the city’s ties to the automotive supply chain that runs through Northwest Ohio. At the same time, a 15-year, 100% exemption on new construction is the most generous tool in the city’s incentive kit, and council members will be weighing the payroll against a decade and a half of forgone property taxes on the improvements.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on. We know the land has sold, who bought it, what it cost, and the shape of the tax and school-payment proposals, all from county records and BG Independent News reporting. We do not yet know what the plant would manufacture, when it would open, or which company would run it — and no opening date should be treated as set until the operator is announced.
What happens next is Monday’s City Council consideration of the tax agreement, followed by the expected mid-December announcement identifying the manufacturer. That announcement will decide whether Bowling Green’s $100 million bet becomes one of the region’s biggest job stories of the decade.
Photo: Downtown Bowling Green, Ohio. Photo: Tma169, CC BY-SA 4.0