BUSINESS LEADERS LAY OUT CHALLENGES FACING REGION
Coalition leaders strike optimistic note at annual meeting.
The Dayton Development Coalition helped the region attract 2,752 new jobs in 2019, but area business leaders say the next challenge is attracting and keeping talent for those positions.
“I need everything from lawyers to nuclear physicists,” said Lt. Gen. Robert McMurry, commander of the Air Force Life Cycle
Management Center, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
“And I put them all to good work,” added McMurry, who leads a center of 26,000 employees spread across nine locations nationally.
The new jobs were a result of attracting 43 business moves or expansions to West Central Ohio and the creation of $130 million in new annual payroll across the region, the Dayton Development Coalition said Wednesday during its annual meeting.
Also celebrated: The retention of 8,921 already existing jobs, with an attendant annual payroll of $338.23 million, as well as new capital investment across the region of nearly $739 million.
The numbers are down a bit from 2018, when the region won commitments to 3,880 new jobs and 13,363 retained jobs.
But coalition leaders reminded a standing-room only audience at Carillon Park’s Winsupply Center of Leadership that good things are ahead: Construction is expected to begin this year on the $182 million Intelligence Production Complex for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center
(NASIC), at Wright-Patterson. And a major program supporting the F-35 fighter jet is expected to move to Wright-Patterson by the spring of 2022.
In all, significant growth often happens at an “evolutionary pace” rather than a “revolutionary pace,” said Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who graduated from the University of Dayton and launched his career in Dayton.
In his remarks, Husted maintained that as large cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, experience a bit of a “drain,” cities like Dayton can entice those looking for lower costs and a change of pace.
“This community has the assets and the institutions to drive that change,” Husted said.
Wright-Patterson, with 30,000 military and civilian employees, is helping to drive that change, as well, and Husted noted that some 6,000 people in the next five years will be eligible to retire from jobs connected to the base. That presents a challenge and an opportunity, Husted said.
“Wright State can be the answer, one of the answers, to that question,” he said.
Also Wednesday, the coalition honored Yellow Springs-based filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar with its Maureen Patterson Regional Leader Award.
Reichert and Bognar’s Netflix film “American Factory” is nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary. The film examines the tensions surrounding Chinese auto glass producer Fuyao Group’s creation of Fuyao Glass America in a former General Motors plant in Moraine. (The Academy Awards will be live Sunday.)
Jeff Hoagland, coalition president and chief executive, was among those who urged Bognar and Reichert early on to make the film that became “American Factory.”
And while a number of companies were heeded as success stories at the coalition’s annual meeting, two received particular attention: Miami Twp. defense engineering firm Cornerstone Research Group and Eaton food preparation equipment producer Henny Penny.
Cornerstone already has nearly 90 jobs in Montgomery County and has recently launched an expansion that will lead to a total capital investment of nearly $10 million and 250 new jobs.
And Henny Penny recently broke ground on a 150,000 square foot product development center with 70 new jobs committed in the $16 million project.
Contact this reporter at 937-225-2390 or email Tom.Gnau@cmg.com.