State of the City: Growth is paving way for more jobs

The city is in good position because of recent business growth, city services and improving infrastructure, as well as the efforts of community members and business partnerships, said Mayor Don Patterson.

He delivered the annual State of the City address via a specially produced video Tuesday night.

Patterson noted several economic accomplishments in 2019 that the city would build upon moving forward.

“As I prepared the highlights from 2019, I was once again overwhelmed with pride in all the city accomplished throughout the year,” he said.

The mayor said Kettering received good news in July from Moody’s, the service that provides international financial research on bonds issued by commercial and government entities.

“The city’s Aa1 bond rating, (which for Moody’s is one step below the top rating of AAA), was reaffirmed,” Patterson said, adding that the city’s finance department has received numerous awards for financial reporting.

He said reinvestment and building a strong infrastructure led to many successful projects last year. The Miami Valley Research Park was cited as an example.

“The research park continues to be a large economic driver for Kettering,” he said. “In late 2017, the city of Kettering completed the purchase of more than 300 acres of unimproved land from the Miami Valley Research Foundation.”

In 2018, the city entered into an agreement with the Kettering Development Corp. for assistance in marketing for the newly acquired acreage as to see the research park enjoy a surge of development moving forward.

Community Tissue Services broke ground in 2018 for a $50 million expansion that will double the size of the Community Tissue Services Center for Tissue Innovation

and Research.

“When completed in 2020, the project will create more than 200 jobs,” Patterson said Tuesday.

Working with the city of Beavercreek to analyze traffic patterns and plan improvements on County Line Road in 2021 was another infrastructure project the mayor touted Tuesday.

“The project will add a lane of traffic in each direction in order to ease daily vehicle flow,” Patterson said. “And we’ll aslo extend the multi-use path from the edge of the Miami Valley Research Park all the way to Dorothy Lane and Stroop Road.”

Kettering’s Tenneco facility on Woodman Drive was cited by the mayor as being one of the area’s top employers and providing a solid economic base for the city.

“Tenneco has increased their employment from 475 people in at the end of 2016, to 624 people in the middle of 2019,” Patterson said. “We anticipate that their employment numbers will continue to rise in 2020.”

The Kettering Business Park might be the biggest example of development and economic growth in the city, Patterson said.

Recent growth there has offset a couple thousand jobs lost from when the park once was home to the Gentile Air Force Station and Defense Electronics Supply Center.

“Today, the Kettering Business Park employs more than 3,000 people,” Patterson said, adding that companies in the park include, Synchrony, Prime-Med Physicians, N12 Technologies, Kettering Municipal Court, Alternate Health Solutions Network and Kettering Health Network.

The biggest development in the park has been the opening of the Amazon 130,000 square-foot “lastmile delivery station,” which handles the last leg of shipments for the company.

‘It is now fully staffed and operational,” Patterson said. “Nearly 400 part-time Amazon employees are working in the facility with six companies providing drivers for the operation.”