COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Big Lots’ northeast Columbus headquarters may soon be sold to OhioHealth for $36 million.
The Columbus-based retailer entered into an agreement on Jan. 31 with the healthcare provider to sell its 24-acre corporate property at 4900 E. Dublin Granville Rd., according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records. If approved, the sale would expand OhioHealth’s New Albany footprint, as the company already operates an emergency care center and a medical campus with an urgent care along nearby Hamilton Road.
Big Lots announced in a city notice last year that 555 employees based at the East Dublin Granville Road headquarters will be terminated. The letter said the “mass layoffs” were expected to begin the week of Dec. 29 and conclude by this April.
The chain’s headquarters includes two buildings constructed in 2017 as part of the Hamilton Quarter development. The first building is office space spanning four stories and 273,000 square feet, while the second is 329,348 square feet with distribution space and a parking garage.
The agreement is forming in the wake of Gordon Brother Retail Partners’ acquisition of Big Lots in January, which included a deal to transfer the ownership of 200 to 400 storefronts to Variety Wholesalers, a Henderson, North Carolina, company that operates several hundred discount stores.
Court documents filed earlier in February show that Variety will run 27 Ohio Big Lots locations, including four Columbus-area stores. Variety is also set to acquire two Big Lots distribution centers thanks to the deal. It remains unknown what will become of the other hundreds of locations that are now under Gordon Brothers, which has since listed the leases of more than 500 stores for sale.
Big Lots’ December notice of mass layoffs at the East Dublin Granville Road headquarters followed another announcement that Big Lots would begin “going out of business” sales at all of its remaining locations after failing to complete a previously announced $765 million sale to Nexus Capital Management, a private equity firm.
Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 proceedings in September. At the time, the chain entered into the sales agreement with Nexus, which was set to acquire all of the company’s assets and business operations. Since filing for bankruptcy, more than 500 Big Lots stores have shuttered, shrinking the chain’s footprint to less than 900 locations.