Signature Associates

Rogers Foam leaves Flint, downtown property listed for lease

Posted By: mlive on February 8, 2026.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Signature Associates’ Gary Stephens handled the leasing and marketing of this Flint property.

The owner of a downtown Flint business property is advertising for a new tenant after Rogers Foam closed its Flint manufacturing location there. Rogers, a foam manufacturer headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, operated from 501 W. Kearsley St. for more than a decade.

The property features 46,565 square feet of industrial space, including a 4,800-square-foot office and three truckwells, according to a listing offering the property for lease by Signature Associates and Cooper Commercial. The listing boasts of the property’s “excellent location with easy freeway access and close to downtown Flint.”

The building is located at West Kearsley and Grand Traverse streets, near the Flint River.

“It’s a nice building in a really good location,” Cooper said. “It’s clean, and it’s dry. We’re looking to bring some jobs to Flint.”

Rogers Foam didn’t respond to requests for comment from MLive-The Flint Journal. The company’s website says it converts flexible materials for customers in the medical, automotive, consumer goods, industrial, packaging, furniture, and bedding industries.

In 2010, it was one of 12 Michigan companies slated to receive Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits, and in 2015, it employed 50 people in Flint, according to Journal files. Rogers’ website no longer lists Flint among the cities it operates from. The property on West Kearsley was purchased by River City Developments, owned by Ridgway White, president and chief executive officer of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. White, whom the Journal could not immediately reach for comment, has said previously that development in the area along the Flint River is crucial for the city’s future. River City purchased the West Kearsley Street property when it was vacant in 2006.

“At that point in time, I saw an opportunity for a building that had fallen into disarray but didn’t need a ton of work so that I could create a space that could create a meaningful benefit for the city,” White told the Journal in 2020. The Rogers Foam property was one of four adjacent properties in the area of West Kearsley and Grand Traverse acquired by River City, including the old Burroughs mill, which was demolished six years ago.