Lights On in Spencer

Lorain-Medina Rural Electric Cooperative unveils new headquarters

By Dan Holland | Photos by Mark Watt

Lorain-Medina Rural Electric Cooperative, a not-for-profit electric distribution cooperative serving 14,000 meters in Ashland, Huron, Lorain, Medina and Wayne counties, unveiled its new 55,000-square-foot headquarters, located at 1 Cooperative Way in Spencer, during an April 11 open house and ribbon-cutting.

The modern facility, which serves as the anchor institution for Spencer Industrial Park along State Route 301, includes a 20,500-square-foot office building connected to a 35,000-square-foot warehouse/service garage at the rear. An initial phase that added utility infrastructure in the industrial park, including water, electric and stormwater systems, along with construction of a pre-engineered metal storage facility, was completed in 2022.

Lorain-Medina Rural Electric, or LMRE, is a not-for-profit electric cooperative owned and controlled by its members. It is one of 24 electric cooperatives across Ohio.

The new facility, built during the second development phase at the site, doubles the size of the former headquarters in Wellington, explains LMRE President and CEO Ed VanHoose.

“We had an old facility in Wellington from 1955,” says VanHoose. “We have expanded some of our different functions over the years, and there wasn’t a lot of room there, and it was very outdated. It would have taken a pretty monumental effort to be able to correct some of those things. Codes have changed over the years, and even some of the ADA requirements, so that we wouldn’t have been able to do some of the things in that building that we wanted to.”

The original site was not suitable for expansion, according to VanHoose.

“At first, we thought we would just demolish the old building and build onsite in Wellington,” he says. “But as we looked at that option, it turns out that there are a lot of underground gas lines in that area. So, it would have been very difficult to do there, as we would not have been able to expand the footprint. And we really needed to be quite a bit larger.”

The current nine-acre site was purchased by the cooperative through its development corporation in 2007, with plans to eventually build an industrial park.

Pleasant Valley Corporation, of Medina, was brought on board as construction manager at risk for the design-build project in 2021, bringing with them the design team of AVID Architects, of Fairlawn, formerly known as MPG Architects. The design was finalized in August 2023, with a groundbreaking in October.

Input was sought from LMRE early in the design process, explains Todd Dille, project manager for Pleasant Valley Corporation.

“Anytime you do a design-build project, you’re going to start off with a lot of input from the end user, which we did, and then it kind of snowballed from there,” says Dille.

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