ASHLAND — An Ashland-based chocolate and sweets manufacturing company is eying the former Pioneer National Latex building for a possible expansion.
Dulci Sweets’ owners Mike McPherran and Brock Meadows said their operation has been blessed to experience growth — and so the duo are looking for more space.
But they wanted to be clear: the plans all over social media and other news outlets are all conceptual. Nothing is set in stone.
Yet.
“We’re in the very beginning phases of this,” McPherran said.
The property that used to house Pioneer National Latex is owned by Hillsdale Development Inc., according to real estate records.
The city of Ashland is not in possession of any site development plans or permit applications, according to Shane Kremser, the city’s engineer.
In fact, Kremser said he doesn’t “have anything on this currently.”
Further, demolition of the site wrapped up March 27, said Cameo Carey, director of Grow Ashland, which is the name of the city’s economic development office.
But that’s not to say the duo doesn’t desire to make Dulci Sweets a destination someday in the future and to be part of the vision behind the Pump House District.
A quick recap
The company, founded in 2021, has operated out of a storefront within a strip mall along East Main Street.
Just two years later, Dulci moved into two, next-door storefronts to allow for a larger manufacturing and storage facility. The 2,000 square-foot move tripled the company’s previous space.
Dulci’s rapid growth and popularity got Meadows and McPherran thinking: “If we were to create more of a retail experience … what would that look like?”
The question led them eventually to Cedarville University’s industrial and innovative design program, which is housed at the International Center for Creativity (ICC) in Dublin, Ohio.
The ICC, a design studio doubling as an education center through Cedarville University, pairs architecture students with “real businesses and projects like Dulci Sweets to provide design opportunities like no other,” reads a press release issued by the school on Tuesday.
A team of 19 senior design students worked over eight weeks to develop site plans, exterior and interior layouts, branding elements and customer experience enhancements.
The result was a Willy Wonka-like 16,000 square-foot storefront in a newly renovated Pioneer National Latex building.
The senior class of the ICC has experience with using their design skills through numerous real-world projects, such as the recent design collaboration with Dulci Sweets Credit: Cedarville University 
Students submitted numerous design concepts for both short-term and long-term planning, which Dulci Sweets was able to utilize specific aspects and elements into their own design plan Credit: Cedarville University 
Many of the outdoor design concepts provided to Dulci Sweets included planning for multiple city blocks of development, allowing the company to see how their business might fit with the future of the Pump House District. Credit: Cedarville University
Pioneer National Latex, a company that cemented Ashland’s reputation as “The Balloon Center of the World,” announced in late 2022 its intentions to shut down its production plant after 84 years in operation. It shuttered permanently by the end of 2023.
Grow Ashland administered a $1 million state grant in tandem with the Ashland County land bank in 2024 to demolish part of the old building, along with 11 others.
Meadows and McPherran acknowledged they are looking to expand Dulci Sweets, but the ICC designs are only conceptual right now. The owners said going through with those plans would cost $10 million or more.
“If we went full Willy Wonka, yeah — easily,” Meadows said. “That’s what was fun with this project. But we’d never be able to afford that. That’s what this project was: whimsical, fantastical and done with no financial limitations.”
But the process was helpful in that it started generating ideas for what could be, Meadows said.
“We would love to have a destination. In a perfect world, Dulci Sweets would be a destination to draw people from miles around and be part of the wonderful vision and revitalization that is the Pump House District.”
What’s the Pump House District?
The Pump House District is a development that encompasses more than five acres of downtown Ashland along East 4th Street between Union Street and Orange Road.
Developers from Columbus plan to construct up to seven buildings with roughly 150 apartment units and other commercial spaces such as restaurants and shops.
The new buildings are expected to surround an “urban meadow” park and the old Pump House building that has sat vacant for years will be redeveloped into a boutique hotel with 94 “suite-style” rooms.
Ashland officials have been laying the foundation for the Pump House District for more than five years. Several developments have taken place within the last year or so.
In January 2024, the city accepted an $800,000 grant from the Ohio Rail Development Commission to remove a rail crossing at Union Street.
A few months later, in April 2024, city council approved a 100-percent property tax abatement for a developer who plans to turn the vacant Pump House building on Orange Street into a hotel.
The city used nearly $220,000 of its American Rescue Plan Act allocation to pay Ohio Edison to remove and bury power lines in the Pump House district area. The money also went to installing infrastructure needed to power the former Pump House office building.
Most recently, the city expected crews to remove the rail spur at Union Street on March 17. However, Ashland Mayor Matt Miller said that didn’t happen.
“We are trying to get a start time for the railroad spur removal,” he said on March 18.
So what’s happening?
Stay tuned, McPherran and Meadows said.
The issuing of a press release about Dulci Sweets expansion plans “wasn’t perfect timing for us,” McPherran said.
But make no mistake, the duo behind the chocolate and sweets manufacturing company is all in on their business and its permanent home: Ashland.
“Ashland’s our place, our base,” Meadows said.