Accounting firm moving to downtown Dayton
A Moraine accounting firm will move into the downtown Dayton office building at 6 S. Patterson Blvd., bringing 70 to 80 high-paying jobs to a quickly growing area of downtown.
RSM US is leaving 2000 W. Dorothy Lane in Moraine to move to the Dayton building at South Patterson and Third Street, near Dayton Metro Library’s newly expanded main branch.
Todd Pleiman, managing partner at RSM, said the company has around 90 offices in the U.S., most of them in or near downtowns.
When RSM sold its Moraine building to Shook Construction early this year, company leaders had a good idea of where they wanted to go.
“Downtown was our focus from the beginning,” Pleiman said Friday.
There will be no cafeteria in the Dayton building, so the RSM professionals will be spending money downtown.
Pleiman said the company wanted to have a standalone meeting ready for a move in May. The RSM name will be prominent on the building, and there will be plenty of parking for employees and clients, who are expected to be coming and going through the day.
The business will take up the top two floors of the building.
Beavercreek builder and developer Synergy reached out to RSM after the company sold its Moraine building to Shook, Pleiman said.
Government incentives were not part of the initial plan, but RSM did reach out to the city of Dayton for a relatively small amount of money. Pleiman could not immediately say how much.
“That was not the driver for us going there,” he said of the incentives.
Montgomery County property records identified the recent buyer of the Dayton building as Mills-Barnett Pavilion Inc. Heartland Properties Inc. was the seller. The sale price was put at $1,050,000.
Dave Hicks, Moraine city manager, said the city tried to keep RSM in the city, but company principals wished to be closer to the center city.
“We had been working with RSM for well over a year,” said Mike Davis, development director for Moraine.
“Their corporate strategy, if you look at their other locations, is they are typically in a downtown,” Davis said.
The good news for Moraine is that Shook Construction Co. bought RSM’s former building, Davis and Hicks both noted.
Shook bought the building at 2000 W. Dorothy Lane for $1.85 million from Battelle and Battelle Realty Co. in late August or early September.
As the Dayton Daily News previously reported, the Shook Construction headquarters building on Northcutt Place has been on the market, and Moraine City Council approved a development agreement with Shook for relocation and improvement of the building at 2000 W. Dorothy Lane.
“We just feel fortunate to have been able to backfill that building quickly,” Hicks said.
The Moraine building had been the home of Battelle and Battelle before becoming McGladrey LLP. The latter company took on the RSM brand identity in 2015.
Built in 1988, the three-story downtown Dayton office building has 20,349 square feet. The building near East Third Street also has 44 dedicated parking spaces.