Tissue Services growth continues
The Community Tissues Services Center has been growing every year. Now we’re about to see that growth manifest itself in an unmistakable way.
The not-for-profit center is embarking on a $50 million, up to 130,000-square-foot expansion that will more than double its physical space off College Drive in Kettering’s Miami Valley Research Park.
Along the way, the center will add about 200 employees in four years, the center’s leaders told me in an interview last week.
What’s driving all of this is innovation and demand in the arena of tissue and burn skin grafts, especially a demand for grafts that are cleanly and precisely manufactured for the human body.
The center will also begin to make medical devices and health products both for itself and for customers, perhaps delving into biologics and pharmaceuticals, said David Smith, chief executive of Community Tissue Services and the Community Blood Center.
“You’re going to drown in opportunity before you starve of it,” Smith said, describing the healthy business environment the center finds itself in.
While it’s easy to think of the center’s Miami Valley Research Park campus as “new,” it’s been operating since early 2011.
The center overall has an amazing story to tell. In terms of distribution of tissue grafts, it is the world’s largest such center, and it also leads the way in distribution of burn-skin grafts.
Meanwhile, the allied Community Blood Center at 349 S. Main St. in downtown Dayton will remain in place with some 300 employees and eight operating clean rooms, center leaders told me.
The saga of Good Samaritan Hospital
The closing of Good Samaritan Hospital has been keeping reporter Kaitlin Schroeder — with Dayton Daily News intern Bailey Gallion, among others — pretty busy.
The latest: The federal government has opened an investigation into whether the closure of the northwest hospital will have a disparate effect on African-American residents, a charge made by the legal team of local clergy who filed a civil rights complaint.
In light of that investigation, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley has asked Premier Health, which operates the hospital, to delay any demolition of the hospital until after the investigation is concluded.
It’s unclear what will happen next. Following the news, Premier said in a statement that “has been mindful of the community’s concerns from the very beginning of this process and has remained true to its mission throughout this transition.”
Premier is standing by plans to close the hospital 12:01 a.m. Monday. At this point, no definitive timeline for demolition work has been publicly revealed.
Something else to note: The
city of Dayton typically requires permits not just for new buildings — but for demolition of structures.
Google fined
If you googled “Google fines” last Wednesday, nearly 1.7 billion results returned.
Among the top items were New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories on the European Union hammering Google with a fine of just over $5 billion and demands to uncouple the Google search engine and the Chrome browser from Google’s Android devices.
The company said it will appeal the decision but the EU’s demands remain in force, unless they’re stayed on appeal.
Google has 90 days to follow the EU’s orders.