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Boom development cycle

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    Posted: Dec 21 2014 at 8:21am

Posted: 7:00 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014

Butler County riding boom development cycle after the bust
By Chelsey Levingston
Staff Writer

BUTLER COUNTY 

    If the construction cranes towering over both sides of Ohio 129 entering Butler County are any indication, the next wave of development in this hot spot between Cincinnati and Dayton has arrived.

    Commercial development activity in Butler County is rising back to pre-recession levels, and a lot of it’s happening at the same time thanks to once-in-a-lifetime projects such as the mega shopping and office complex Liberty Center and a proton therapy center being built at Cincinnati Children’s Liberty Campus for cancer treatment.

    “What you’re seeing right now is the commercial response to years of residential development and growth,” said Chris Wunnenberg, director of development for     Schumacher Construction Dugan Inc., a West Chester Twp.-based property development and management company.

    More than 3,000 non-residential building permits were approved through the end of November across Butler County townships, Trenton and New Miami. A year ago, 2,945 permits were approved, according to the county’s development department.

    Commercial activity is also trending higher over recent post-recession years in Fairfield, Hamilton and Middletown.

    “Right now it means new investment, new job opportunities, new shopping opportunities and better health care options,” Wunnenberg said.

    For example, five new hotels are in various stages of construction along the Interstate 75 corridor in West Chester and Liberty townships and Sharonville. A sixth hotel, Hilton Garden Inn, was the first to open in September.

    Other construction started this year includes two outdoor sporting goods stores — Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Inc. — in West Chester Twp.; the Artspace Lofts in downtown Hamilton, which includes 42 artist apartments on top of commercial space; a health rehabilitation center Covenant Village of Middletown; and an all new auto supply plant in Monroe for UGN Inc.

    Meanwhile, Miami University’s rural Oxford campus has turned into a construction zone during the last five years as officials have renovated or demolished dozens of buildings. More than $400 million has been spent since 2009, with more work to go, said    David Creamer, Miami’s vice president for finance and business services.

    New business announcements signal what else could come. Business projects announced for next year that could lead to more new construction include a “significant” forthcoming announcement from The Christ Hospital Health Network, plans for a natural-gas fired power plant in Middletown and the second phase to add more retail space at The Streets of West Chester.

    “I can’t tell you if this is the start of another development wave or if when we finish this, we’ll be sitting around looking at each other the next 10 years,” Wunnenberg said.

    “But I can tell you it’s busy right now.”

    Many of the business projects now coming to fruition spent years in planning and design, and were delayed by the recession and hard-to-get financing.

    “At least in Fairfield we’re seeing in 2014 a lot of existing companies doing some expansion projects,” said Greg Kathman, the city’s economic development manager.

    “My impression is that companies that maybe a few years ago when the recession was happening, they were having some hard times, but now they’re coming out of that,” Kathman said. “They’re having some growth in business, and they feel they can comfortably move forward with some large scale expansion.”

    The single largest construction project to start shoveling dirt in 2014 was the approximately $350 million Liberty Center, located in Liberty Twp. at the intersection of Interstate 75, Ohio 129 and Liberty Way. Slated for a fall 2015 opening, the complex consists of more than 1 million-square-feet of combined shopping, dining, residential and office space.

    Spread over more than 60 acres, construction involves as many as 15 major structures, including three parking garages, according to developer Steiner + Associates, the same company that built Easton Town Center in the Columbus area and The Greene Town Center in Beavercreek.

    It’s a project so massive that Butler County will have to hire an outside company to help with the electrical and building inspections during the approaching crunch time ahead of opening, said David Fehr, development director for the county.

“This is a lot of concentration,” Fehr said. “Secondly, the thing the makes it challenging is the speed at which they want it done.”

    “We’re going to scrutinize it just as we would any other project,” he added.

Speculative construction is back, when developers build space without a tenant in mind. Instead, they expect to lure an occupant with ready-to-go facilities. Schumacher Dugan Construction this year started and completed a speculative office building, which is the second office building of three planned at its Union Centre Office Park in West Chester Twp.

    In fact, West Chester Twp. currently has the tightest office submarket in terms of available space in the entire Cincinnati region with a 4.2 percent vacancy rate, said James Flick, vice president of research and marketing for Cassidy Turley Commercial Real Estate Services.

    Additionally, two speculative industrial bulk buildings are under construction totaling 800,000-square- feet at Port Union Commerce Park, near the West Chester Twp. and Fairfield border, Flick said.

    “To see the return of speculative construction in not only the industrial market, which has seen a faster recovery than the office market, but in the office market shows a positive sign that the entire region is seeing the recovery move a little faster,” Flick said.

Things are picking up, but new development has been steady even during the recent economic downtown in West Chester Twp., said Mike Juengling, the township’s community development director and former director of development for Butler County. One example is West Chester Hospital, which opened in 2009.

    “We certainly have more projects now than we had a year or so ago,” Juengling said. “But I don’t think it’s anything we haven’t seen before.”

    While suburban sprawl can be criticized for building brand new when there’s plenty of vacant space to be filled elsewhere, Wunnenberg says development follows where people want to live.

    When Cabela’s searches for a site to open a new store, it looks at catalog and online sales to pinpoint areas where the specialty retailer already has a strong customer base and opportunities to grow, said spokesman Nathan Borowski. From there, Cabela’s scours the map for growing population areas interested in outdoor recreation.

    Another driving factor in where Cabela’s chooses to open a new store is based on locations that provide easy highway access and high visibility. For all those reasons, the Nebraska company settled on the Liberty Way and Interstate 75 intersection for its second Ohio store.

    “We thought it would be a great location for our customers in the Cincinnati area as well as the Dayton area,” Borowski said.

    “There’s already a draw for customers to visit that area. We see some potential for that area to grow,” he said.


BUTLER COUNTY’S BIGGEST CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS OF 2014

The Journal-News asked local government development departments to provide information for the single largest commercial building project in their jurisdictions, based on values listed on building permits approved in 2014.

$350 million Liberty Center, the shopping, dining, residential and office complex under construction in Liberty Twp.

$11.8 million Artspace Hamilton Lofts, a renovation of the former Hamilton Center to create 42 artist live/work units, plus 3,000-square-feet of ground floor commercial space.

$13 million Covenant Village of Middletown, a post surgery rehabilitation center

$2.2 million repair of Express Scripts roof in Fairfield

 

 

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