CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Sherwin-Williams Co., one of the region’s most prominent employers, will build its new headquarters in the heart of downtown Cleveland, where offices will rise from a sea of pavement west of Public Square.

Read the Latest: Sherwin-Williams confirms plans for new downtown Cleveland HQ, Brecksville R&D center

On Thursday morning, the global paint manufacturer will announce plans for the headquarters project and for new research and development facilities in Brecksville, according to sources who spoke to The Plain Dealer on the condition of anonymity.

In an email late Wednesday, a Sherwin-Williams spokeswoman said, “We have nothing new to report. When we have an update, we’ll issue an official announcement.”

That announcement will end years of rumors and months of speculation about the intentions of the publicly traded company, a 154-year-old business founded in Cleveland and based in the same downtown office complex for nearly a century.

By recommitting to the central business district, Sherwin-Williams is bucking a decades-long trend of Fortune 500 employers, including major manufacturers, leaving for the suburbs and other states. And with its choice of headquarters site – parking lots that span nearly 7 acres north of Superior Avenue, on both sides of West Third Street – the company is positioned to dramatically alter a downtown landscape that bears scars of demolitions dating to the 1960s.

The win for Cleveland, which faced the loss of more than 3,300 jobs and $15 million in annual tax revenues if Sherwin-Williams decamped, is tempered by the company’s decision to consolidate its research and development operations in the suburbs. The new R&D facilities will be located in Brecksville, on the site of a former VA hospital being repositioned as a mixed-use campus.

Now that Sherwin-Williams has made a decision, wrapping up months of discussions cloaked by confidentiality agreements, the process will become much more public. Financial incentives will require legislation and public votes, at least at the city and county levels. New offices and R&D buildings will undergo design and planning reviews.

Construction won’t be complete until 2023, at the earliest.

Sherwin-Williams confirmed in September that it was exploring options for new facilities, with sites in Cleveland, elsewhere in Northeast Ohio and out-of-state on the table. The city’s hold on a marquee employer with global brand recognition - and an office-and-research footprint totaling 1.25 million square feet - was uncertain.

The $51 billion company employs roughly 4,400 people in Northeast Ohio, or about 7% of its global workforce. About 3,000 of those employees are housed in the company-owned Art Deco headquarters complex, the Landmark Office Towers, and nearby leased space. More than 300 employees work at the Breen Technology Center tucked behind Tower City.

During a conference call in October, Chief Executive Officer John Morikis told analysts that the company’s search for space was being driven by its need to keep and attract talent. Moving to new buildings from a smattering of older properties would bring teams of workers closer to each other, boost efficiency and, ultimately, save money.

From the outset, the parking lots on Public Square and in the Warehouse District were logical contenders for a corporate headquarters project.

The Public Square lot, owned by the Richard E. Jacobs Group of Westlake, was cleared in 1990 to make way for the Ameritrust Center, a skyscraper that would have been Cleveland’s tallest. That project was shelved due to a bank merger. A much more modest office tower, proposed in 2008, never materialized.

The larger parking lots, owned by Warrensville Heights-based Weston, Inc., once teemed with historic buildings. Those structures were razed gradually, from the 1960s into the 1990s, leaving a prominent stretch of downtown barren. Developers have imagined everything from a convention center to offices, retail and apartments on the properties in the intervening years. But nothing, including plans for more than 3 million square feet of buildings announced by a Weston joint venture in 2015, has moved forward.

The company’s future research and development site, by contrast, is a relatively new opportunity. Sources say the R&D facilities are headed to Valor Acres, a 100-acre redevelopment of the former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital property off Interstate 77. The project is a joint undertaking by the DiGeronimo Companies, of Independence, and the city of Brecksville.

It’s unclear what will happen to Sherwin-Williams’s existing buildings when the company consolidates workers and moves. Real estate experts say the Landmark Office Towers, which the company has owned since 1985, could be attractive candidates for a historic-preservation project involving a mix of uses, including housing.

Read more Sherwin-Williams coverage:

Sherwin-Williams’ new HQ should create positive ripples in Public Square, downtown Cleveland

Sherwin-Williams staying downtown, moving R&D to Brecksville is ‘great news’ for local businesses

Ohioans react on social media to headquarters news

What experts say Sherwin-Williams will consider in search for a new global HQ

Sherwin-Williams has been a Cleveland fixture for 154 years