WAVERLY, OH - Masco's shuttered Mills Pride cabinetry is set for a staged reopening for lumber production and possibly furniture manufacture, after an investment group bought the plant on Dec. 18 for $5 million, according to reports in the The Columbus Dispatch and the Pike County Daily.

Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI), retained Collier International to sell Msaco's 11-building, 2.5 million square-foot facility in Waverly, OH, as well as another 1 million square-foot building at the Zahn’s Corner Industrial Park. The 57-acre cabinet plant closed nearly two years ago and took some 1,200 jobs. At its peak, the Masco cabinetry operations employed 3,000 people.

Investors are Christopher Semarjian, who runs Industrial Commerce Ltd., near Cleveland, and Stuart Lichter, who heads Industrial Realty Group, near Los Angeles. Everett Hannah, owner of Gilco International Lumber in Varney, WV, is also a partner in the prject, according to local reports, and will open a lumber products firm employing 28 people in February.

Gilco International Lumber businesses include Cabin Creek Lumber, Gilbert Forest Products, Painstville Wood Products, and Virgnia Forest Product., combined under the firm when it was acquired by Hannah. Gilco, which produces 65 million board feet of Appalachian hardwood lumber - poplar, red oak, white oak, bass wood, hard maple, soft maple, hickory and ash - annually, with significant exports to China, is reportedly in talks with a Chinese furniture maker about using part of the Masco Waverly plant.