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