Dining, retail will fit in space
Plans for new downtown Dayton projects have come fast and furious in recent weeks. The latest: Troy and Dublin construction management company Brackett Builders Inc. intends to move to Dayton, to one of the developments it helped build, the business said Wednesday.
Its corporate headquarters will be relocated from Troy to where it will occupy 5,500 square feet of office space at 424 E. First St.
The mixed-use building — called Madison on First — will include 11,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space and 3,900 square feet of patio/ plaza space, developer Crawford Hoying said in a release.
Madison on First will be a short walk from RiverScape MetroPark and across from the Day Air Ballpark, home of the Dayton Dragons, in a former Mendelson’s Liquidation building, Crawford Hoying noted.
Brackett Builders has had a role in the development of the Water Street Apartments, as well as other projects across Ohio. It also was involved in the building of the Aileron business education campus outside Tipp City and Fort Hamilton Hospital in Hamilton.
“Over the past few years while working on construction projects in the area, we’ve really come to love downtown Dayton,” Tom Hoying, president of Brackett Builders, said in the announcement. “When we decided to expand our corporate office, we quickly determined that there was no better place than Water Street for our new headquarters.”
The news comes less than two weeks after Crawford Hoying, in partnership with Woodard Development, said it planned to knock down the vacant Wright State University Kettering Center at 140 E. Monument Ave. to make way for a new, six-story apartment building called The Monument.
Tom and Bob Hoying, a Crawford Hoying principal, are brothers and former Ohio State University football players.
On the First Street project, Brackett will restore much of the original structure of the 120-year-old building which was home to City Forge & Iron Works, once owned by Andrew Plocher. Crawford Hoying said work will include soda and walnut blasting of the original brick and wood on the building to restore both to previous conditions.
New breakfast-and-lunch restaurant now open on Troy’s north side
A breakfast, lunch and brunch restaurant called redBERRY is now open in the former Sherwood Shopping Centre in north Troy.
The new restaurant’s hours, through at least July 19, are 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Plans call for adding Tuesday hours soon, a spokeswoman for redBERRY said.
The new restaurant serves “classic breakfast, lunch and brunch fare with some creative surprises,” the spokeswoman said. Signature menu items include a berry parfait, the redBERRY Skillet, French Toast
Bread Pudding, a redBERRY Salad and a BLT.
The redBERRY concept was developed by local entrepreneur Mykie Thompson and investors who have been re-invigorating Sherwood Shopping Centre, now called simply Sherwood. Thompson’s parents, Michael and Telisa Delligatta, have overseen the Michael Anthony’s at the Inn restaurant at the Inn at Versailles in Darke County.
Panera closes near Dayton Mall
A Panera Bread bakery-cafe that had operated since 2005 at 2500 Miamisburg-Centerville Road near the Dayton Mall is now closed, although a spokeswoman for the restaurant chain’s Dayton-area franchisee said Tuesday that a new, larger replacement will open in 2021 on the east side of I-675.
Visitors to the free-standing Panera in Miami Twp. are greeted with a sign reading “CAFE CLOSED: Sorry, we’re closed until further notice. Please visit us at our other locations: Heart of Centerville, Austin Landing and Sugarcreek (Twp.).” A “For Lease: Restaurant/Retail” sign has been erected in front of the cafe on Ohio 725.
A spokeswoman for Covelli Enterprises, the franchisee that operates all Dayton-area Panera locations, said in an email Tuesday that a new Panera cafe that is under construction near Lyons Road and Miamisburg-Centerville Road is a relocation of the Dayton Mall store, which is about a mile-and-a-half away.
The 4,523-square-foot Panera will include outdoor seating and a drivethrough. It is located on a 1.35-acre tract in an outlot in front of the Washington Park Plaza.
The Panera under construction is about two miles west of the restaurant chain’s “Heart of Centerville” store at 11 N. Main St., which, like the Dayton Mall store, does not have a drive-through window. The downtown Centerville location has reopened following the coronavirus pandemic-related statewide shutdown of all dine-in services, and also is offering curbside service.
Warren, Ohio-based Covelli Enterprises, which operates more than 315 restaurants in eight states, has expanded Panera’s footprint throughout the Dayton area since purchasing what was then 11 Dayton- and Springfield-area Panera locations in 2014.
New brewery opens in Beavercreek
The Dayton area’s newest craft brewery, Southern Ohio Brewing, opened its doors to the public July 4 in Beavercreek.
The new brewery has been in the works for more than a year at 818 Factory Road, along the Miami Valley Bike Trails Creekside path just north of U.S. 35. Co-founder James Williams and members of his family were busy putting the finishing touches on the brewery’s taproomthis past week.
The renovation was extensive. “We took the building to its bare walls,” Williams said.
The building and surrounding two-acre parcel previously housed Banjara Banquet Center and All In One Banquet Center, as well as a Factory Lighting Outlet store. It opened in the 1970s as the Beaver Valley Golf Center.
Southern Ohio Brewing’s initial hours will be 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Reservations are recommended and can be made on the brewery’s website, southernohiobrewing.com. Walk-up customers will be accommodated if space is available, allowing for social distancing.
“This is not the opening-day party that we wanted to throw,” Williams said. “But the support from the community and from our neighbors has been amazing.”
Opening-day beers will include a blonde ale, West Coast IPA, peanut butter porter, rye pale ale, and red ale. Growler and 32-ounce can fills will be available. Long-term plans call for adding guest taps for other local craft breweries, as well as offering wine and cocktails.
Williams and his brother-in-law had been fermenting their idea of opening a craft brewery for two years, and looked at spaces, mostly along the I-75 corridor between Dayton and Cincinnati. But the Beavercreek property drew them in.
“We used to travel down that bike path and see that place, and we thought if it ever became available, it would be a great spot for a brewery,” Williams said last year.
Nearly two dozen craft breweries have opened or are in the works in the Miami Valley in the last nine years. None of the most recent wave of new breweries has shut its doors, and nearly all have expanded their offerings or added second locations.
Good news behind 1.3M news jobless claims in U.S.
Just over 1.3 million people filed for first-time unemployment benefits in the week ending July 4, a decrease of 99,000 from the previous week, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday.
The new number confirms the ongoing trend of a falling but still greatly elevated number of Americans seeking unemployment compensation benefits.
It was the 15th consecutive week with new or initial benefits claims numbering above one million.
Applications for the benefits have remained stubbornly lodged between 1 million and 2 million since May, indicating a recovery — but a slow one.
Scott Murray, an economist at Nationwide, said the new numbers “show the labor market is the process of healing.”
“The decrease emphasizes that firms are slowing their efforts to rightsize operations, lessening the linkage of jobless and weak consumer demand,” Murray said. “For displaced workers, the decline in claims reduced the backlog of those looking to reenter the workforce, another positive.”
In Ohio, the state’s Department of Job and Family Services (OD JFS) said that for the 10th straight week, continued applications for unemployment benefits declined.
In Montgomery County, for the week ending July 4, there were 1,639 firsttime claims for unemployment benefits, with 21,106 claims continuing from previous weeks.
In Warren County, there were 454 initial claims, with 6,356 claims continuing. In neighboring Butler County, those respective numbers were 863 and 12,752.
Clark County saw 360 new claims and 4,301 continuing claims.
Across all of Ohio, those who remain jobless filed 347,587 fewer continued claims last week compared to the peak in April. For the week ending July 4, OD JFS reported 33,483 initial jobless claims.
Airway Road Salvation Army store closing
The Salvation Army store on Airway Road is closing, the store has notified Ohio government.
Eight employees have lost their jobs, Cleveland attorney Madilyn Maruna said in a July 2 letter to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The termination of the employees happened back on May 11, Maruna said.
The decision is attributed to the COVID19 pandemic, which destroyed retail traffic at a number of businesses, particularly from midMarch on.
The Salvation Army Family Thrift Store on Derr Road in Springfield closed for good in October 2018.