Hospital closes after years of financial problems
Following years of financial problems, a small physician-owned Dayton hospital shut down Friday, leaving 60 people without jobs.
Executives said financial issues led to closure of the 12-bed Medical Center at Elizabeth Place, which for 13 years offered a variety of medical services from cardiology to neurology to radiology at the Edwin C. Moses Boulevard campus.
The medical center was unable to “increase profitability or cash flow” to continue operating, according to a letter from Medical Center at Elizabeth Place treasurer Steve Chavez to employees. Chavez also is an executive with Kettering Health, which owned a 50% stake in the medical center.
“The hospital was a tremendous medical success, but a financial failure,” said chairman of the Medical Center at Elizabeth Place board Dr. John Fleishman. “But I would do it all again. The staff is fabulous and they love the place. They stuck with us through thick and thin — and there wasn’t much thick.”
The former St. Elizabeth’s hospital, which closed in 2000, was brought back to life with the help of Medical Center at Elizabeth Place in 2006. The medical center has a significant presence in the building, but is not the only business that operates on the campus. The medical campus has a number of provider offices and other tenants that will remain open.
Until recently it was home to Wright State’s psychiatric program, which just moved out to be closer to WSU’s main campus.
“Ultimately our inability to achieve contract parity with our competitors led to (Medical Center at Elizabeth Place) becoming insolvent. It is nothing short of a miracle that we have survived for almost a decade and a half,” Fleishman said.
The center lost its hospital status in January 2019 for several months because the 12-bed facility sometimes had too low of a volume of patients admitted to count as a hospital under federal standards. By losing the status, the hospital was no longer able to bill Medicare and Medicaid.
With about 60% to 65% of its patients covered by Medicare or Medicaid, hospital leaders said this threatened the hospital’s ability to stay in business.
IHOP to reopen; Huber next?
The IHOP franchisee that brought the chain back to the Dayton market with the December 2019 opening of a restaurant on Miller Lane will reopen the Springfield IHOP restaurant that has been closed for more than a year.
And more IHOP locations are planned for the Dayton area, perhaps before the end of the year, according to Steven Jones, the Miller Lane IHOP restaurant’s general manager.
Jones told this news outlet Thursday that the timetable for the reopening of the Springfield IHOP at 2206 N. Bechtle Ave. has not yet been set, but applications are being accepted for all positions. Those applications are available at the Miller Lane IHOP off I-75 in Butler Twp., and are also available online at indeed.com, Jones said.
The Miller Lane and soonto-be-Springfield IHOP’s franchise owner has no connection to the franchisee who operated the three IHOP restaurants in Beavercreek, Huber Heights and Springfield, that shut down unexpectedly and were padlocked in January 2019.
There has been speculation in Huber Heights that the former IHOP at 7611 Old Troy Pike might be reopened under the new franchise ownership, but city officials say they have not received any confirmation or plans for a reopening. Jones declined comment on the potential locations of any additional IHOP restaurants in the Dayton area.
Spurlin semifinalist for Beard Foundation
Emily Spurlin, a 2006 graduate of Oakwood High School, has scored the culinary equivalent of an Academy Award nomination, and she credits a former Dayton-area restaurant chef-owner for helping to give her the courage to pursue her dream.
Last week, Spurlin, who works at Lula Cafe in Chicago, was named one of 20 semifinalists in the 2020 James Beard Foundation awards in the category of Outstanding Pastry Chef. Unlike most of the foundation’s restaurant and best-chef awards that are broken down into regions in the U.S., the pastry-chef award is a national category, which makes the accomplishment even more significant.
Spurlin, 32, moved to Oakwood with her family when she was a teenager and finished her last two years of high school there. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics at Miami University in Oxford.
After graduation, she spent about eight months working as a hostess at the former Rue Dumaine in Washington Twp., a popular foodie destination for 10 years before shutting down in 2017. Rue Dumaine was co-founded by Anne Kearney, the Dayton area’s only James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef.
Rahn’s stops business
Rahn Keucher has served his last giant pretzel, bagel, and chocolate-filled croissant at Dayton’s 2nd Street Market. And the closure of his bakery, Rahn’s Artisan Breads, has forced more than two dozen Miami Valley restaurants to scramble to find alternative sources for the specialty breads, rolls and buns that Keucher has supplied to them for nearly two decades.
“We’re done,” Keucher said Monday, two days after an emotional final day at the Five River MetroParks 2nd Street Market, where he had set up shop every week for 17 years. A long line of customers moved slowly past the Rahn’s display case throughout the morning, stopping to talk and pay their respects to Keucher and to thank him for the years of business and friendship.
One customer gave Keucher her late father’s prized Cincinnati Reds spring-training jacket. Another slipped Keucher a $100 bill and refused to take it back.”I received thank-you notes, cards, flowers,” Keucher said. “Everyone was very, very gracious.”
The market had posted a notice on its Facebook page in mid-February announcing that
Rahn’s would shut down at the end of the month, but in the last two weeks, potential “white knight” investors stepped forward and entered into serious and extensive talks with Keucher and market officials about partnering with him to possibly keep Rahn’s open. But Keucher said late Monday that the closure is now final.
Financial considerations were the primary factor in his decision, Keucher told the Dayton Daily News. Restaurant demand for his products took a hit in 2019 because of the Memorial Day tornadoes, the Oregon District mass shooting and the KKK rally in downtown Dayton. But the final blows came from a rash of equipment failures at his commercial bakery and breakdowns of delivery trucks, all of which would have been prohibitively expensive to repair or replace, the bakery’s owner said.
Flyboys to open new location
Flyboys Deli has signed a lease to open a new restaurant on the ground floor of a CareSource building at 219 N. Patterson Blvd., CareSource officials and the restaurant’s owners announced Monday in a joint release.
The new deli will be located next to the Winans Chocolates & Coffee shop that opened Jan. 13 at 221 N. Patterson Blvd. Plans call for construction to be completed over the next few months in the ground-floor retail spaces that the building’s owner is calling CareSource Ballpark Village.
“We could have added more office space in that area, but we wanted to do something more,” David Clapper, director of facilities management at CareSource, said in a release. “We decided to add amenities that improve the experience of the people who live, work and play in the downtown area including our employees.”
About 800 CareSource employees work in the building, a CareSource spokesman said.
PNC Bank to have Dayton Arcade presence
PNC Bank will have a key place at the quickly developing downtown Dayton Arcade, becoming one of the site’s larger tenants.
The University of Dayton and The Entrepreneurs Center have announced PNC Bank as the “premier partner” of the innovation hub at the Dayton Arcade, now named “The Hub Powered by PNC Bank.”
The hub, expected to open in late 2020, will occupy 95,000 square feet in the Arcade with academic programs from the University of Dayton; business, venture creation and commercialization support services from The Entrepreneurs Center; and working space for small businesses and start-ups with open desks to private offices to larger tenant spaces, along with meeting rooms, conference areas, high-speed internet and other amenities, the center and the university said in a joint announcement.
The partnership will “expand programming at The Hub to immerse students in the business community and help entrepreneurs from across the greater Dayton community bring their ideas to life,” the release said.
One idea behind the move is to encourage students to remain in the Dayton area on graduation, the center and UD said in a joint release.
All second- and third-floor office spaces that ring the historic Dayton Arcade’s rotunda have been leased — including a portion to Sinclair Community College, the Dayton Daily News recently reported.
Sinclair will open the new 2,500-square-feet Sinclair Entrepreneur Center in The Hub at the Dayton Arcade to help teach aspiring and existing entrepreneurs, Sinclair officials said.
Hara property rezoned
Trotwood City Council this week approved new zoning for Hara Arena property, opening the door to possible light industrial uses on what was once a much-loved Dayton entertainment site.
Council approved the rezoning of the area from recreational to a PUD (planed unit development) that permits specific light industrial uses, said Chad Downing, executive director of the Trotwood Community Improvement Corp.
What happens next will be up to property owner Michael Heitz, who has held the property around 1001 Shiloh Springs Road since before the devastation of last year’s Memorial Day tornadoes.
“Our hope is that with the changing of this (zoning), that will really start to give him (Heitz) the chance to have real looks from companies who would like to locate there,” Downing said. “He has been great to work with. He has been up front about the process and about what the hurdles are.”
Heitz and others have praised the Hara site as being especially promising, with more than 24 acres and a building that covers some 650,000 square feet.