U.S. Medical Glove Co. has scuttled its $240 million plan to build a manufacturing facility at the former Procter & Gamble site in St. Bernard, Ohio, leaving the 638,000-square-foot industrial campus without its would-be tenant. The company will not open a facility at the former St. Bernard Soap Co. property after all, and the site's owner is now considering a very different use for part of it: a data center.
Local 12 reported that CAI Investments LLC, the Las Vegas-based trust that owns and manages the property at 5177 Spring Grove Ave., is weighing a small data center that would occupy about 15% of the former soap manufacturing property. Tom Breidenstein, an attorney for CAI Investments, told the St. Bernard Village Council last Thursday that the trust was considering the data center concept for the site.
The property carries deep industrial roots. Procter & Gamble's former factory began creating bar soap in 1890, and St. Bernard Soap Co. was established in 2003 after being spun off from Procter & Gamble. The site went on to operate as P&G's historic Ivorydale bar soap plant for more than 110 years before the company divested it in 2003 to Trillium Healthcare Products Inc., according to Happi. The plant then continued as an independent contract manufacturing operation for two more decades.
A Plant That Already Had a Painful Recent History
That contract manufacturing chapter ended abruptly in January 2024, when St. Bernard Soap Company announced it would permanently close the facility by mid-March after Procter & Gamble decided to consolidate contract manufacturing and shift production to Boston. The move removed roughly 90% of the plant's business, per Happi's reporting; the plant's brands included Ivory and Safeguard, and the closure eliminated 118 local jobs.
The fallout didn't end with the closure. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court ordered defunct plant operator VVF Cincinnati, doing business as St. Bernard Soap Co., to pay landlord CAI Investments more than $32 million after the company defaulted on its lease, as Hoodline reported in December 2024. That judgment included $26 million in remaining lease obligations and $1.35 million in unpaid water bills, stemming from a lawsuit CAI filed to recover lost real estate income after operations ceased.
Why the Glove Maker Passed on St. Bernard
U.S. Medical Glove Company is Harvard-based. CAI Investments has reported a $286 million Delaware Statutory Trust offering in March 2026.
U.S. Medical Glove Company has a facility in Chillicothe, while it had earlier planned to expand into St. Bernard. In May 2026, the company and partner startup U.S. Paper Mill secured Transportation Security Administration safety approval for nitrile gloves produced at a retrofitted former paper mill there, opening the door to federal procurement eligibility through the Central Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
The abandoned St. Bernard project also fits into a much rougher national picture for domestic glove manufacturing. As of July 2026, despite roughly $850 million in post-COVID-19 federal grants awarded to six domestic glove manufacturers, only about 1% of the 120 billion nitrile gloves used annually in the U.S. were actually produced domestically, according to Becker's Hospital Review. The outlet attributes the shortfall to U.S. production costs running nearly double those of Asian imports.
Data Centers Eye an Old Soap Plant's Power Grid
What makes the St. Bernard site attractive for a data center pivot isn't just its size — it's the electrical infrastructure already in place. Commercial listings for the property describe two separate power supply lines delivering 40 megawatts immediately, with potential expansion up to 200 megawatts, per a LoopNet listing. CAI originally structured its acquisition of the campus under a Delaware Statutory Trust offering called Healthcare Products I, DST, reflecting the site's earlier focus on healthcare and personal-care tenants.
A data center occupying roughly 15% of the complex would use part of the 638,000-square-foot campus. The Spring Grove corridor surrounds the property.
