< Previous20 JULY 2018 SI T E S E L E C T IO N D A YT ON | INTELLIGENCE REPORT David Montgomery, an attorney at 104-year-old Dayton-based law fi rm Pickrel, Schaeff er & Ebeling, knows Dayton pretty well, not only through his expertise in land use, real estate, construction law, business law and the public sector, but in his daily life. His favorite places? “Downtown for the arts, Th e Greene for entertainment, shopping and food,” he says, referencing a $100 million project in which his fi rm was involved. “My children enjoy the Dayton Dragons and MetroParks.” We checked in with him for insights into some of the compelling projects and trends in the Greater Dayton region. Site Selection: What level of interest are you seeing from clients and associates around the region or nationally in Dayton’s newly declared federal Opportunity Zones? David Montgomery: Th ere is great potential for attraction of investment into any of Dayton’s Opportunity Zones (OZs), which number 17. As multiple OZs exist within the City, and given the currently strong development climate within the City and surrounding region, the OZs off er another fi nancing tool for developers to use. Many of the City’s largest employers are located within, or adjacent to, the designed OZs, which allows them to potentially increase their investment in areas where they are rooted. I’ve had regional (Midwest) and national developer clients explore utilizing the OZ funding as a tool for bringing a project online, and as a tax savings/ deferral mechanism on the divestment of assets. Given your expertise in land use and real estate, are there particular opportunities in the Dayton region that stand out due to recently instituted state or local zoning or other programs? David Montgomery: Not necessarily any changes in the zoning laws, but defi nitely in the way the zoning laws have been applied by jurisdictions. Since 2008 every jurisdiction to one degree or another has become more business-friendly in the manner in which they regulate and apply zoning and development laws, rules and regulations. At the same time, the state has come up with If you want to know the lay of the land, it helps to ask an insider — especially if that individual is literally a land expert. Business Climate Public-Private Partnership Can Be Habit-Forming The Greene Town Center is a $100 million-plus mixed-use project on the borders of the City of Kettering and the City of Beavercreek on the east side of Dayton. Photo Courtesy of Olshan Properties22 JULY 2018 SI T E S E L E C T IO N D A YT ON | INTELLIGENCE REPORT new and innovative incentive programs that have contributed to successful public/private partnerships. For larger urban projects, the use of Historic Tax Credits and New Market Tax Credits have been a signifi cant help to developers. While many are familiar with the City of Dayton, they may not be as familiar with the various municipalities that comprise the metro area. Which cities in the area have gotten their act together with regard to infrastructure improvements; expedited permitting and red tape reduction; and public-private partnerships? David Montgomery: In the northern suburbs — Huber Heights, Vandalia, Union and Trotwood — and in the southern suburbs — Springboro, Miamisburg, West Carrollton, Moraine, Centerville and Kettering — the name of the game anymore is “public/ private partnerships,” and all of the jurisdictions in and around Dayton have gotten the message. Th is includes creating an environment that is user- friendly from an administrative and procedural standpoint, to using various public fi nancing tools, such as Tax Increment Financing districts, Community Reinvestment Areas, and Property Assessed Clean Energy fi nancing programs. Th ese suburbs have strategically positioned the potential use of many of these programs to fi rst attract and then assist development and businesses to their jurisdiction. Have you perceived increased interest in the Dayton region from venture capital investors, perhaps related to the presence of the University of Dayton, the Air Force Research Laboratory andother R&D-focused institutions? David Montgomery: Don’t forget that most of the Air Force research labs are located at/on Wright- PattersonAir Force Base, in the east suburb of Fairborn. GE in the last fi ve years has built a $50 million research facility next to UD. Emerson Electric also built a signifi cant new research facility on the same campus as GE. We are also seeing more organically grown tech fi rms begin and grow here in the Dayton region. Th e Dayton region has a variety of business incubators, which includes seed fi nancing for the company as it grows. Venture capital investors are a source of that fi nancing, as are strategic business partnerships, joint ventures, etc. Describe an economic development project you and your colleagues at PSE Law have been involved in, and what contributed to its success. David Montgomery: We’ve been involved in many of the larger commercial real estate developments in Dayton and surrounding regions. One of the most exciting is Th e Greene Town Center, a $100 million-plus project on the borders of the City of Kettering and the City of Beavercreek on the east side of Dayton. It is a true lifestyle center — retail, entertainment, offi ce, residential. We have been involved with the project since its inception. We took it through the acquisition, the zoning process, the construction phases and now we are dealing with whatever issues arise. Th e project was/ is a success because the development team worked together so closely. Th is was the fi rst project to go through the City of Beavercreek that required true public-private partnership on fi nancing. It was the fi rst project in the City (and I believe Greene County) that used tax increment fi nancing. It was the fi rst project in the City of Beavercreek (and one of the fi rst few in Ohio) to create a Community Entertainment District. It was the fi rst “new urbanism/lifestyle center” mixed-use development in Greene County and Montgomery County. Accordingly, we forged a lot of new ground within the development and local jurisdiction communities in our area of the state. We worked very closely with the City of Beavercreek (who was great to work with) to address a major development project that was not contemplated by their zoning code at the time. We made sure that all aspects of the project were properly integrated, that any and all possible matters that arose were dealt with before they became problematic, all of which contributed to the completion and occupancy of the project at the earliest possible time. David Montgomery, Attorney, Pickrel, Schaeffer & Ebeling24 JULY 2018 SI T E S E L E C T IO N D A YT ON | INTELLIGENCE REPORT Self-Sustaining Culture Leaders at two architecture, engineering, construction and geospatial rms describe why Dayton makes sense for their clients, their employees and their companies. One’s been around since 1911. Th e other helped build the huge Wright Aeronautical plant in the 1940s, and has been growing in Dayton ever since. We talked to leaders at architecture, engineering and geospatial fi rm Woolpert and Messer Construction about the projects they’ve worked on, and the people they continue to recruit and empower in Greater Dayton. Woolpert is just past 900 employees now, as its global business keeps growing. In addition to design and engineering expertise, the fi rm operates a fl eet of planes, sensors and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); and pursues R&D and project activity involving advanced water technologies, asset management, building information modeling (BIM) and sustainable design. Th e fi rm is not an AEC company — it’s AEG: architecture, engineering and geospatial. A longtime partner with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Woolpert recently created an area development plan as a roadmap to strengthen and support current and future growth of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). Over fi ve decades, the NASIC campus has expanded to 773,000 sq. ft. and 3,400 personnel housed in eight facilities and a modular trailer. Woolpert created a plan consolidates, right-sizes and expands the campus size by over 900,000 gross sq. ft. over four phases of development, starting in fi scal year 2019. Th at’s just one project among a constellation of deals and partnerships that keep Scott Cattran, Woolpert’s CEO and chairman, moving. I spoke to him just before he was set to board a fl ight to South Africa to close an acquisition of what he calls the best geospatial fi rm in Africa, with another acquisition in the works that fi gures to augment Woolpert’s already impressive data and analytics capabilities. “It’s a big part of our core strategy, to continue to give better global data so people can do global planning,” Cattran says. Th e ESRI and Google are other major spatial data partners Woolpert has worked with for years. “What makes us unique is this AEG integration,” he says. “Other companies can use it and access it. We fl ew it. We know all the specs.” Such work has taken the fi rm global, working from 28 offi ces across the U.S. “Dayton is a great headquarters to track talent, and not an expensive place to live,” Cattran says. “I live between Dayton and Cincinnati, so I basically have two airports to choose from, and Engineering & Beyond Drones and aircraft are part of the geosptial data- gathering fl eet at Woolpert. Photo courtesy of Woolpert26 JULY 2018 SI T E S E L E C T IO N D A YT ON | INTELLIGENCE REPORT have no loyalty to any airline because of it. If I need to, I can scoot up to Columbus. Th ere’s a lot of fl exibility … and in Dayton, I can show up half an hour before my fl ight and can get on board.” But how is the onboarding of talent for Woolpert? “We get talent from all over the place — interns, local colleges, as well as fi ve-, 10- and 20-year people,” he says. A continuous improvement program he started called “Great Place to Work” helps distinguish the company from others. “I just spoke with our interns, and asked why they picked us. One of them said, ‘You have this cool geospatial part prominent to the future of design, plus it’s a great place to work.’ I said, ‘I love you, kid.’ ” Cattran says he sees no disadvantages of operating a global company from Dayton. It’s aff ordable living for families, there is a wide choice of places to live, and recruiting is not a headache, helped in part by some hiring out of the military sector that Woolpert has served for so long. His colleague Shane Imwalle, Woolpert’s chief strategy offi cer, agrees. And the project activity bodes well for even more living options. “We do a bunch of development of apartments downtown typically sold before they’re even built,” Imwalle says. “Microbreweries like Warped Wing are doing really well. Warehouses are being converted. Th e riverfront downtown is thriving. Dayton is becoming a pretty cool place to be downtown again.” Imwalle says the Dayton Development Coalition has been a model for JobsOhio, in part because “we have a machine and a culture of university-private sector-government, all part of the same organization creating priorities for the region, with the concept that a rising tide will raise all ships. It’s not new, but it’s extremely eff ective.” Growing From Within Messer Construction Co. didn’t establish an offi ce in Dayton until the 1990s, around the time it became employee-owned. But it’s been doing business in the area since building that plant for Wright Aeronautical in Evendale in the 1940s. Today its business includes work for Wright- Patterson, higher education clients (it built a good chunk of Miami University of Ohio’s campus), healthcare and corporate work, and the Dayton offi ce is part of an overall company that employs around 57 salaried employees companywide. Kevin Cozart, a University of Cincinnati recently promoted to executive vice president from his post leading the Dayton offi ce, is still located in Dayton, but now also oversees offi ces in Dayton, Nashville and Knoxville. He says Messer’s culture of cultivating freshly minted engineering graduates into full-fl edged project managers has proved fruitful and attractive. “Our number one place for recruiting is the University of Dayton, which has an outstanding civil engineering program,” he says. “Since we opened here in 1999, I’d say the majority of our engineers have come from that school. Another thing we did very early on was institute a Messer minority scholarship program in the engineering school.” Th at program feeds into the fi rm’s successful co-op program. “Th e other thing we have going for us is proximity to Cincinnati, so we’re able to recruit from UC also,” Cozart says. “It’s not too diffi cult to get them interested in the Dayton region.” Matt Schnelle, also a UC graduate, just took over leadership of Messer’s Dayton offi ce, fresh from overseeing multiple design-build projects at pharmaceutical fi rm Alkermes’ $35 million expansion in Wilmington. He says high-tech manufacturing clients are drawn to the region by the R&D going on at Wright-Patt and University of Dayton. “Th e amount of R&D has really expanded at Wright-Patt over the last eight to 10 years,” he says. “Just a tremendous amount of growth, and the percentage of people who work there who are non-military is pretty signifi cant. We see it continuing — the amount in the next fi ve years is more than we’ve seen in the last 10.” Meanwhile, Messer’s recruiting reach doesn’t have to overextend to fi nd the talent to help build projects for those clients. “We’re in close proximity to a large number of strong academic engineering programs at UC, Purdue, University of Dayton, University of Kentucky and Ohio State, so we’re not having to recruit from around the country,” he says.” Messer Construction earned the Associated General Contractors “Build Ohio” Award for its work on real estate investment fi rm The Connor Group’s corporate headquarters in Miami Township. Photo courtesy of Messer28 JULY 2018 SI T E S E L E C T IO N D A YT ON | INTELLIGENCE REPORT A bold solution in Dayton addresses a national health crisis. In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that each day 115 people died due to opioid overdoses in the United States (a total of 70,237 for the year), and to date that rate continues to steadily increase. Alarm about the issue prompted Richard Pops, chairman and CEO of pharmaceutical fi rm Alkermes (which is expanding in the Dayton-area city of Wilmington, Ohio, and which makes an addiction recovery drug) to state, “Th e CDC’s numbers compel us to acknowledge the truth: We have inadequate treatment systems for addiction and serious mental illness. It is time for change.” Dayton and Montgomery County have been one of the hardest-hit spots in this health scourge. Kettering Health Network, Premier Health and Verily — the life sciences/healthcare arm of Google parent company Alphabet — are ready to be the change. In June, they opened the fi rst facilities within a new campus (pictured) operating under the name OneFifteen, a non-profi t ecosystem dedicated to the full and sustained recovery of people living with opioid addiction. OneFifteen will begin seeing patients later this summer. Alexandria Real Estate Equities designed and is developing the OneFifteen campus, anchored around a curved, looped pathway that connects all of the elements of the OneFifteen ecosystem — including vocational guidance for those in recovery. “Th e spirit and strength of the Dayton community has been apparent to us since our early days conceiving of what is now OneFifteen,” said Andy Conrad, CEO of Verily. “It ties back to not only healthy communities, but getting people back in the workforce,” says Julie Sullivan, executive vice president of regional development for the Dayton Development coalition. “We’re already in a tight labor market across the country. Verily saw this as a unique opportunity. Th ey wanted a population that not only had a signifi cant problem, but that would embrace the concept. We met with them in November 2017, and by the end of the visit, they said, ‘We understand the collaborative nature of doing things here, we get the innovation that takes place here — this is where we need to do this.’ ” Sullivan says one high- tech manufacturer looking to site a plant in the area told her team up front that opioid use was an issue in its decision. “Lucky for us, we were already down the path of creating solutions, and laid out the whole strategy,” she says. Verily takes that plan and scales it up dramatically. Already, Sullivan says, “We have been contacted by several communities who want to learn from what we’ve already done.” Buddy LaChance, a veteran community development leader and CEO of nonprofi t development onMain (a JV of Premier Health and the University of Dayton), calls the project “a great example of how this community works at solving problems. Th at’s the kind of community this place has always been. Sometimes it takes something bad to happen to create a turning point.” Healthcare Image courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, IncNext >