Owner of Kettering ex-Tenneco plant spending millions to update site for future business

The 128-acre property was vacated late last year after the auto parts maker announced in November 2021 that it would be closing the plant.

Industrial Commercial Properties (ICP) owns the 1.1-million square-foot facility with Industrial Realty Group (IRG).

The work is expected to cost “several million at this point,” but no future user has been identified, said Dean Miller, an ICP senior vice president.

“What you’re seeing out there is not about any one tenant. It’s just part of a program for us,” Miller said, noting “a long list of things that we want to be able to do to the building.”

The goal is “to model our marketing of the property toward an updated look and feel for that facility, which we think will be good for everybody,” he added.

Several sections near the front of the property have been or are set to be demolished in three phases, according to city records.

Phase I includes “powerhouse related” parts, such as fuel tanks, smokestacks, overhead utilities, a cooling tower, chutes and pipes, Kettering documents show.

The second one involves items at the façade of the main building, including a large sliding gate, a pedestrian entrance from parking lot and signage mounted to containment walls.

The final phase includes “selective demolition” to interior parts no longer needed, city records state.

The ICP-IRG partnership has owned the property since 2012, but it has had little to do with it when Tenneco occupied it, Miller has said.

The property includes five parcels ranging from 1.45 acres to two pieces both more than 55 acres, according to Montgomery County real estate records.