CHILLICOTHE, Ohio – Less than a year after a newly created company took control of Chillicothe’s former paper mill, the real estate underneath a major portion of the operation has changed hands again.
The number attached to the transaction is a staggering $76,525,000.
Official records show US Paper Mill LLC transferred a newly created parcel making up a substantial portion of the former mill complex to Critical Infrastructure I, DST on Aug. 3.
The name may be unfamiliar to most people in Ross County.
The company behind the investment structure is not.
Critical Infrastructure I is a Delaware statutory trust sponsored by CAI Investments LLC, a Las Vegas real-estate investment and development company founded by Christopher Beavor.
US Paper Mill did not pack up and leave after the sale. Instead, the company that previously owned the property became its tenant.
CAI says US Paper Mill now leases approximately 2.2 million square feet under a 25-year absolute triple-net lease with 2% annual rent increases. CAI markets the trust as an all-cash, debt-free investment offering currently valued at approximately $91.85 million.
Behind US Paper Mill sits another company familiar to anyone who has followed the mill since its 2025 resurrection: US Medical Glove Company.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists US Medical Glove as the owner/operator of US Paper Mill’s Chillicothe medical-device establishment. CAI calls US Paper Mill an affiliate of US Medical Glove and identifies US Medical Glove as the guarantor of the Chillicothe lease.
That relationship matters because what is happening in Chillicothe is not occurring in isolation.
The same glove company is tied to another CAI industrial investment in Illinois that is now mired in lawsuits and a foreclosure dispute.
The same parent company behind Chillicothe is fighting allegations over millions of dollars in unpaid utilities.
And while the Chillicothe operation has repeatedly been promoted around the revival of American manufacturing, US Medical Glove announced this year that it intends to make an initial investment of as much as $200 million in a manufacturing plant in the Philippines expected to employ more than 2,000 Filipino workers.
All of that leaves Chillicothe with a question considerably larger than who technically owns a piece of the old paper mill.
Is this the beginning of the long-promised reinvestment in the sprawling industrial complex — or are we watching the valuable real estate being separated from an increasingly troubled operating business as part of a broader exit strategy?
From $7.8 million to $76.5 million
US Paper Mill was the entity formed under the US Medical Glove corporate structure to acquire the former Pixelle property after the paper maker shut down.
Ross County property records show US Paper Mill acquired the Pixelle real-estate portfolio on Oct. 17, 2025, in a transaction recorded at $7.8 million involving 31 parcels.
At the time, local officials and company representatives celebrated a new chapter for the massive industrial site.
US Medical Glove was publicly identified as the parent company, and glove production began almost immediately. A local report following the acquisition said US Medical Glove workers had been brought into Chillicothe while new employees were being hired to prepare production lines.
The company later said more than 200 full-time employees were working at the facility and promoted plans for 15 nitrile-glove production lines, with additional lines under construction or planned.
Then the ownership structure changed.
Less than 10 months after the original acquisition, US Paper Mill carved out a new parcel and conveyed it to Critical Infrastructure I for $76.525 million.
US Paper Mill went from owning the real estate to leasing millions of square feet back from a private investment trust.
And CAI had been preparing that investment structure long before the deed was recorded.
A CAI brochure dated December 2025 — just months after US Paper Mill acquired the former Pixelle property and roughly eight months before the recorded conveyance — already marketed Critical Infrastructure I, DST to investors.
The brochure described a 25-year lease, 2% annual rent increases, approximately $6.67 million in first-year net operating income and US Medical Glove as the lease guarantor. It listed an offering size of approximately $91.87 million.
In other words, the sale-and-lease structure was not something dreamed up in August. It had been mapped out months earlier.
The company behind the new landlord
CAI Investments describes itself as a integrated real-estate company headquartered in Las Vegas with roughly $1.5 billion in assets under management. Christopher Beavor founded the company in 2011.
Its model includes Delaware statutory trusts, investment vehicles frequently marketed to real-estate investors, including those pursuing tax-deferred 1031 exchanges.
CAI’s current Chillicothe offering describes the property as a “fully leased industrial asset” and “domestic manufacturing facility.”
Follow CAI to Illinois
For anyone wondering why the name CAI matters, look about 450 miles west of Chillicothe.
CAI already has another major industrial property involving US Medical Glove.
CAI describes the property as a roughly 1.5 million-square-foot manufacturing complex leased long-term to US Medical Glove. The company has promoted the site as US Medical Glove’s global headquarters and a centerpiece of domestic nitrile-glove manufacturing.
CAI announced in March that the investment offering had been fully subscribed.
Today, that property is facing a much different reality.
On Sept. 11, Shaw Local published an investigation into what had happened at the former Motorola plant, reporting lawsuits, a $127 million foreclosure claim and the shutdown of the building.
The headline alone is difficult to ignore in Chillicothe because the names on both projects overlap.
- CAI.
- US Medical Glove.
- A massive former industrial property marketed around domestic manufacturing.
- And a Delaware statutory trust sitting between the real estate and the operating company.
- The Illinois court record adds another layer.
A court record shows a judgment of $2,479,961.95 entered in litigation involving Commonwealth Edison, USMC 2023 LLC and US Medical Glove Co. LLC.
The record lists the judgment as unsatisfied.
At $2.48 million, it is another major unpaid-utility dispute tied to the glove company.
And Chillicothe has one of its own.
$3.47 million allegedly owed to Columbia Gas
Columbia Gas of Ohio sued US Paper Mill on July 30.
According to the complaint, the utility supplied natural gas to several accounts at the former mill before service was disconnected for nonpayment.
Columbia Gas alleges the unpaid balances totaled $3,467,662.72 as of April 1.
Those are allegations in a civil complaint. They have not been established as a final judgment.
But the lawsuit did not appear out of nowhere.
Months earlier, the mill temporarily lost natural-gas service after US Paper Mill acknowledged it had failed to renegotiate the gas contract inherited from Pixelle.
The company publicly called that episode an “avoidable mistake.”
By summer, Columbia Gas was in court seeking more than $3.4 million.
There are other cases.
A Chillicothe steel supplier sued US Paper Mill over nearly $20,000 it alleges went unpaid.
And PNK DC LLC — a company that had been negotiating to acquire part of the mill for a data center — sued US Paper Mill and John and Alexander Todoroki in August.
PNK alleges it advanced $3 million as part of a proposed deal and later discovered substantial utility liabilities and mortgages it says were not disclosed during negotiations.
The lawsuit alleges one mortgage carried a stated maximum indebtedness of $12 million and another $14 million.
Again, these are allegations. The defendants are entitled to contest them, and the filing itself does not prove fraud or liability.
But the sequence matters.
At the same time companies surrounding the mill were dealing with multimillion-dollar litigation, a major portion of the real estate was being moved into a separate investment structure.
A manufacturing revival — and 2,000 jobs in the Philippines
Perhaps the sharpest contrast comes from the company’s own message about American manufacturing.
US Medical Glove has repeatedly promoted its mission as rebuilding domestic medical-glove production after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed U.S. dependence on overseas suppliers.
A May announcement distributed by US Paper Mill through the Chillicothe Ross Chamber of Commerce declared:
“Made by Americans for America.”
US Medical Glove CFO Lucas Muriello said the company believed “the best products in the world are made by American workers.”
The company pointed to new glove lines in Chillicothe and approval for gloves intended for federal users.
But two months earlier, US Medical Glove executives were in New York discussing another manufacturing future.
One in the Philippines.
The office of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced in March that US Medical Glove planned to establish a manufacturing plant there.
Two days later, the Philippine government provided additional details: the initial investment was expected to reach $200 million, with plans to employ more than 2,000 Filipino workers.
Philippine officials said the company could eventually use the facility to export medical supplies and expand its operations in the country.
While US Medical Glove and its affiliates market Chillicothe around the rebirth of domestic manufacturing, the parent company is simultaneously planning a massive new manufacturing operation abroad.
The public is entitled to ask how those two strategies fit together.
Then there is City Hall
The corporate restructuring was not the only part of the mill story unfolding outside public view.
Ross County Auditor Jeff Lehner said his office received the conveyance paperwork several weeks before the transaction was processed.
The $76.5 million size of the deal and the history of the mill prompted something beyond ordinary processing.
“The size of the transaction and history of this property caused us to want to apply a higher level of scrutiny,” Lehner said.
He said his office held a meeting involving the Ross County engineer, Chillicothe Mayor Luke Feeney and an assistant county prosecutor to make sure the conveyance paperwork was in order.
After legal review, Lehner said the county was advised to process the transaction because it met county standards. But why was Chillicothe City Council never notified. We spoke to one council member who stated that he was never made aware that the mill had been placed in a trust, nor that a meeting with the auditor and mayor’s office had occurred.
This was not the first time members of City Council said consequential information about the mill had failed to reach them.
The data-center letter council did not see
On Feb. 12, the mill’s owner contacted the city seeking confirmation that a data center could operate at the property.
Eight days later, Chillicothe Chief Building Official Brandon Gill issued a written determination saying a data center was compatible with the existing General Industrial zoning and did not require conditional-use approval.
Mayor Feeney has said zoning-verification letters are routine, that the document was a public record and that it was not intentionally hidden from council.
But when the letter surfaced months later, seven members of council said they had not previously seen it.
That was after council unanimously approved a 60-day data-center moratorium Aug. 24.
Council subsequently voted 8-1 on Sept. 14 to repeal the moratorium after the February zoning determination became part of the public debate.
The administration characterized the failure to get the letter before council as an administrative or clerical breakdown.
Then came the $76.5 million conveyance.
Lehner says the mayor personally participated in a meeting about that transaction before it was processed.
At least one council member interviewed said he was never told that the meeting occurred and was never informed that a substantial portion of the mill had been transferred into the trust.
Those are two legally separate events.
One was a zoning determination.
The other was a private real-estate transaction.
But they involve the same property during the same rapidly evolving redevelopment.
And in both cases, significant information was known somewhere inside local government while members of the city’s legislative body said they did not have it.
A transparency problem
Even the tax records raised questions
When the newly split parcel first appeared in county records, portions of its tax history appeared blank or unavailable.
Lehner said there is a straightforward reason.
The parcel did not previously exist.
Because it was created through an August split and county valuation records operate on a delayed tax-year schedule, Lehner said the property will not receive its own tax bill until the appropriate future cycle.
He called that standard procedure.
But he was also clear about what happens when valuation time arrives. He said he intends to value the property at its recorded sale price: $76.5 million.
The bigger story is the transaction itself.
What was monetized?
A sale-leaseback is not inherently suspicious.
Businesses routinely sell real estate and lease it back to unlock capital, reduce direct real-estate exposure or fund operations and expansion.
That may ultimately be what is happening here.
But the public record does not yet show where the proceeds from this particular $76.525 million transaction went or how much, if any, is committed to rebuilding manufacturing operations in Chillicothe.
What the records establish is that the real estate and operating company have been separated.
- US Paper Mill once owned the property.
- Now Critical Infrastructure I owns it.
- US Paper Mill pays rent.
- US Medical Glove guarantees the lease.
- Private investors can buy interests in the DST.
- CAI markets the property’s long-term rent stream.
- And US Paper Mill continues operating inside the buildings.
The unanswered question is why.
Reinvestment or exit strategy?
Taken individually, each development has an explanation.
A sale-leaseback can raise money for investment.
A utility lawsuit is a civil dispute.
A failed data-center deal is a separate business transaction.
An overseas factory can be part of global expansion.
Problems at an Illinois property do not prove the Chillicothe property will suffer the same fate.
And a mayor participating in a county review of conveyance paperwork does not prove wrongdoing.
But investigative reporting does not require pretending those events exist in separate universes.
They involve overlapping companies, overlapping executives, overlapping investment structures and the same enormous piece of industrial infrastructure sitting in the middle of Chillicothe.
Last October, US Paper Mill acquired the former Pixelle operation.
Within months, CAI had structured an investment offering around millions of square feet of the property.
By August, a newly created parcel had been conveyed for $76.525 million.
US Paper Mill became the tenant instead of the owner.
Its parent company became guarantor.
That parent is tied to another CAI-backed industrial property in Illinois now confronting lawsuits and a reported $127 million foreclosure claim.
US Paper Mill is being sued in Ohio for more than $3.4 million in allegedly unpaid gas bills.
A former prospective data-center buyer is suing over a failed multimillion-dollar transaction.
And US Medical Glove is simultaneously planning a $200 million manufacturing facility expected to employ more than 2,000 people in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, City Council members have twice said important information about the mill was not reaching them while they were debating decisions directly affecting its redevelopment.
None of that proves an exit strategy.
But it makes asking the question unavoidable.
If the $76.5 million sale represents a reinvestment strategy, the obvious question is where that capital is going and what concrete investment Chillicothe will see in return.
If US Medical Glove remains committed to making Chillicothe a cornerstone of domestic production, residents deserve to know how the company’s planned $200 million Philippine expansion fits into that future.
If Critical Infrastructure I is simply a long-term landlord, then the public deserves clarity about who ultimately controls the site’s redevelopment and what happens if the operating companies cannot meet their obligations.
And after months of controversy over who at City Hall knew what about the data center and the property transfer, local officials face another straightforward question:
When decisions involving one of the largest and most consequential properties in Chillicothe are unfolding, why does the public — and sometimes City Council itself — keep finding out afterward?
The next question is whether Chillicothe is witnessing the financing of a revival — or the architecture of an exit.
