Kettering Health buys land in Middletown

the Interstate 75 and Ohio 122 interchange.

Kettering Health Network officials told the Journal-News that it plans to provide healthcare services at the site but is still finalizing plans.

The land is less than one mile from Premier Health’s Atrium Medical Center and about six miles from an emergency facility that Kettering Health opened in Franklin in 2015.

The purchase is just the latest example of growing hospital services between Cincinnati and Dayton, where systems from both markets are competing to give residents more choices for care and the latest in medical technology.

Middletown City Manager Doug Adkins said city staff has not had any direct discussions with Kettering Health Network about the scope of the project or its timing.

The former hotel, which closed about three years ago, has been demolished and crews have been clearing the site to prepare for new construction over the past several weeks.

The closing of the hotel came at a time when the city was investing hundreds of thousands of dollars on gateway improvements at the intersection of I-75 and Ohio 122, often called the “doorstep” to Middletown.

According to the Warren County Auditor’s Office, the property owner was listed as Middletown Property and was purchased on Aug. 11, 2016, for $3.7 million.

Kettering Health Network operates eight hospitals, 10 emergency departments, and 120 outpatient facilities throughout southwest Ohio.

Fuyao Global, the parent company of Moraine’s Fuyao Glass America Inc., was profitable as a whole last year, even as its Moraine operation suffered losses.

In the global company’s annual report, recently released in English, Fuyao achieved a revenue of 16,6 billion renminbi, representing year-on-year growth of 22.45 percent, with a profit before income tax of 3.9 billion RMB.

But in Moraine, the company lost $41 million, Fuyao reported.

Fuyao said it plans to build out its Moraine complex so that it has an annual production capacity of 22 million square meters of automotive safety glass. The company invested $237 million into the plant in 2016, with an accumulated investment so far amounting to $654 million.

“Currently, the construction of the capacity of approximately 12 million square meters of the automotive glass project in Moraine, Ohio (in) the U.S. has been completed,” Fuyao said in the report.

In 2016, the Moraine operation achieved revenue of $104 million

“Fuyao Glass America Inc. is expected to step into a benign development track in 2017,” the report said.

Fuyao Global Chairman Cho Tak Wong bought the Moraine plant, a former General Motors SUV assembly factory, for $15 million in May 2014.

“The successful operation of the U.S. Fuyao automotive glass plant and the additional investment in such plant can provide faster and more valuable services to North American customers and the largest market in the world,” the report says.

In November, Jeff Daochuan Liu, president of Fuyao Glass America, told the Dayton Daily News shortly after his appointment that the Moraine plant had lost about $90 million in two years — but he intended to turn that around.

Liu’s goal is to have the company break even in 2017 and reach profitability soon beyond that, he said at that time.

“It will be a really significant achievement, to break even next year,” Liu said last year.

A message seeking comment was sent to company officials.