Decade of development around Dayton airport brings jobs, revenue, traffic headaches

Commercial development on and around the Dayton International Airport over the past decade transformed what had been farm fields and rural roads into a bustling hub of internationally known companies, creating thousands of jobs, boosting income tax revenue and diversifying the local economy.

“It’s really astounding how much development we’ve had here. Some of it’s good fortune. Some of it is preparation. And then there’s a fair amount of risk-taking,” said Steve Stanley, project development specialist and retired executive director of the Montgomery County Transportation Improvement District, which oversaw much of the infrastructure work.

About 3,300 people work at businesses on and around the airport, according to the city of Dayton.

Among the companies are Procter & Gamble Co., Amazon, Chewy, Inc., Crocs, Energizer, Sierra Nevada Corp., PSA Airlines and Air Wisconsin. TJX Digital Inc., which owns T.J. Maxx, will open a logistics complex next year. Joby Aviation Inc. just announced plans to manufacture electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft and employ up to 2,000 people.

“Once you get name brand companies like that that have a national and international exposure that’s really what spurs other companies beginning to look at that area,” said Terry Slaybaugh, vice president of sites and infrastructure for JobsOhio and the city of Dayton’s director of aviation from 2011-2019.

“When Joby was announced within a few days we were getting calls from other companies in that sector, in that industry or related industries wanting to know what the opportunities were in Ohio and specifically in Dayton.”

The Joby jobs would be in addition to the 5,472 job commitments made since 2014 by companies locating on and around the airport, according to Shannon Joyce Neal, vice president of strategic communications for the Dayton Development Coalition, which is the western regional partner for JobsOhio, the state’s privatized economic development arm.

“Without jobs, you die. That’s what’s been driving this whole thing for all of us in the region: it’s about creating jobs,” said Union City Manager John Applegate. “It wasn’t just a home run. It was a grand slam.”

In many ways what has happened in the airport area spanning Dayton, Vandalia, Union and Butler Twp. is a case study in how a region can set its collective mind to getting something done and then execute on it, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.

“Between the city, the county and the coalition, everybody was running in the right direction,” said Erik Collins, former Montgomery County director of community and economic development and now Centerville’s development director. “We’re still working the plan. The goal is to have a diverse economy. It’s not going to (just) be distribution world. It’s going to be manufacturing. It’s going to be aviation.”

This newspaper interviewed a diverse group of more than two dozen people about the impact of the booming airport region development, the challenges it creates and what the future holds in the wake of the two recent aerospace wins, Joby Aviation and Sierra Nevada Corp., that promise jobs with higher pay than the warehouse and distribution centers dominating the airport area now.

Those interviewed included officials from the cities and township, Montgomery County and the TID, the Dayton Development Coalition and JobsOhio, Vandalia-Butler City Schools, Aullwood Audubon, companies and business experts.

“I’m very excited about the continued development around our airport. With Sierra Nevada starting their second hangar and Joby Aviation’s planned manufacturing facility, our local economy will gain thousands of quality jobs in an industry that Dayton is known for,” said Dayton Mayor Jeffery Mims, Jr.

“Our region’s collaboration and economic resilience have made these developments possible. I am especially thankful for the leadership of JobsOhio and the Dayton Development Coalition. They’ve been great partners in the work to attract new industries to our region.”

Location, location, location

Known as the “crossroads of America,” the region’s proximity to the intersection of Interstates 70 and 75 has long been a draw for companies, particularly in the logistics industry, with Caterpillar Inc. and the now-defunct Payless Shoes both locating distribution facilities in Montgomery County before development in the airport area took off with P&G’s 2013 decision to locate its Dayton Mixing Center there.

“You can get anywhere by vehicle or freight within a day’s drive to 60% of the country’s population from I-70 and 75. That is the original business case to why companies want to locate here,” said Chris Kershner, president and CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. “Where we have been good at as a community is leveraging that asset.”

Jeff Lyons, executive vice president of real estate company CBRE called Dayton “logistically the best-situated market in the Midwest.”

“There is abundant labor up and down I-75, which is attractive to companies in the area,” said Lyons, whose firm is handling a large spec building owned by Houston-based Pinchal & Co. in Vandalia’s Stonequarry Crossings industrial park.

The state’s “business-friendly” tax structure and coordination between Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office, the state legislature, local and state development officials and the city of Dayton were critical to the city winning the Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Aviation Innovation and Technology Center, which opened on airport grounds earlier this year, said Mark Williams, the company’s senior vice president of strategy.

“It’s the best alignment of government I’ve ever seen. And they were there to support businesses coming in,” Williams said. “Not just to get us but also to help us when we get here. It was the best that I’ve seen from any of the other states.”

Regional cooperation, construction of the five-lane Union Airpark Blvd. and utilities through farm fields, robust local and state tax incentives and the availability of local, state and federal funding for infrastructure were key to the airport area development, according to those interviewed.

Underlying it all was the Dayton region’s desire to diversify the economy and replace some of the thousands of good paying jobs the region lost with the exit of longtime employers like NCR and Mead, the shuttering of General Motors and Delphi plants and the closure of the Emery/UPS cargo sorting facility that once employed 4,000 people at the airport.

Development has largely proceeded without major opposition to projects, except for in 2019 when a developer proposed putting a facility on Dayton-owned land that the city had allowed nearby Aullwood Audubon to restore as a prairie at Frederick Pike and U.S. 40 in the mid-1990s. Public outcry erupted over the possible destruction of Paul E. Knoop Jr. Prairie and concerns about protecting the watershed feeding Wiles Creek, which runs through Aullwood. Ultimately the developer backed out.

“The city remains committed to conducting an environmental assessment while engaging in discussions with our partners, prior to solidifying any definitive plans for the site,” said Meg Maloney, Dayton’s sustainability manager. “The city will work with stakeholders before proceeding with any tangible sales or developments.”

Laurie Cothran, senior manager for development and finance at Aullwood Audubon, said discussions continue with the city.

“We are optimistic that we will reach an agreement to save the prairie. Our hope is there will be no development,” Cothran said. “We can work together to balance (protecting) our critical water sources and critical watersheds with our critical economic needs.”

Land and taxes

Most of the airport area companies are located in Dayton or Union, which over the years aggressively annexed Butler Twp. land around the airport boundary in exchange for extending water and sewer utilities requested by landowners, who later sold to developers.

Years ago the city of Dayton purchased land for noise abatement and an airport expansion that did not occur. The airport and land the city purchased around it are non-contiguous to Dayton but inside city limits, and some Dayton-owned land is in Union, said Toni Bankston, Dayton’s chief communications officer.

The city of Dayton owns about 600 acres of active farmland in the area. She said land that was purchased for airport expansion will remain for that purpose.

Dayton estimates it gets $4 million annually in income tax from companies on and around the airport.

Applegate didn’t have a total for current revenues for Union but said P&G provides Union with about $600,000 annually in tax revenue. Amazon and LeGrand opened this year and TJX Digital Inc. opens next year, and Applegate estimates tax revenues from them of a “minimum of $1 million per year starting out. With full employment it will go up.”

He said the city already spent $1 million in income tax revenue from construction workers building those three buildings to restore a church in Union and convert it into a police department, moving police out of the overcrowded city hall.

“Financially I know it’s going to be great for the city of Union, but I just can’t know what those numbers are until I start seeing the actual revenue and we can make better projections,” Applegate said.

Vandalia had no estimate of its revenues from airport area development.

Property tax abatements and other tax incentives helped lure companies deciding where to locate, but deprive schools, libraries, and governments of some new tax revenue for the period of the abatement. Stanley and others argue that without those tax incentives the companies may have picked another state or region offering tax breaks.

Butler Twp. has none of the new businesses but receives some revenue under under an arrangement with city of Dayton, said Township Administrator Erika Vogel.

“On the positive side economic development means more jobs for township residents and patrons to our business district,” Vogel said. “It also means more people living in the township, which builds our community, while adding to our tax base.”

Union and Dayton both share some revenue with Vandalia-Butler City Schools and the Miami Valley Career Technology Center, according to city officials.

Vandalia-Butler received $1.4 million from those cities in fiscal year 2023, said Mary Stephens, school district spokeswoman.

“While we may be getting a little bit more than we would if that land would sit idle (as) a field it’s still not the full amount that we would receive after the 15-year-abatement is up,” said Vandalia-Butler Superintendent Rob O’Leary, referring to the multiple 15-year abatements that have a variety of expiration dates.

“Certainly we are for economic development. We are supportive of things that would bring in good livable earning jobs, especially for parents.”

Truck traffic headaches

Truck traffic is the biggest challenge created by the development, said Vandalia City Manager Dan Wendt, who gets an earful from citizens about trucks driving through the center of Vandalia on U.S. 40.

“One of the Vandalia’s largest issues and the things that we hear from our residents is them wanting to embrace responsible economic development choices while mitigating the negative effects of commercial truck traffic,” Wendt said.

Wendt said the city is looking at multiple strategies to mitigate traffic concerns, including prohibiting truck turns in some places and working with the Ohio State Highway Patrol on safety enforcement.

Vogel said the trucks have a negative impact on township residents and increase wear and tear on rural roads. Truck drivers also get lost, making a wrong turn onto narrow Miami County roads, sometimes winding up stuck, said Montgomery County Engineer Paul Gruner.

“There’s a farmer up there that has semis turning around in his farm field,” he said. “There are not a whole lot of people having problems with that, but the people having problems are pretty upset about it.”

Recent roadwork projects include the newly opened large roundabout at Union Airpark Blvd. and Dog Leg Road, the completion of a project widening U.S. 40 from the Airport Access Road bridge west to Union Airpark Blvd., reconstruction of a section of Northwoods Boulevard and improvements made to Lightner Road, Gruner said.

There’s been no comprehensive effort to determine how much taxpayer money has been spent on public infrastructure improvements to service the businesses, but it is likely close to $60 million in improvements, not including those made on the airport grounds, Stanley said.

The county and Vandalia are moving forward with the $21.2 million Dayton International Airport Northeast Logistics Access Project, which Gruner said is projected to be completed by 2027 if funding can be obtained.

That project, part of what is informally called the “ring road” project, would improve Northwoods Blvd. and widen North Dixie from inside Vandalia to Lightner Road and over to Peters Pike. The goal is to take trucks from I-75 to the northern end of the airport area rather than through Vandalia, Gruner said. The TID is looking at continuing improvements to the west beyond Peters Pike, he said.

“Everybody in that area is going to benefit from those jobs and from the payroll taxes. It’s a win-win on the infrastructure because everybody uses the infrastructure, both the public and the businesses,” said Montgomery County Administrator Michael Colbert. “And people get jobs and they are able to feed their families and support their families. And it’s a win-win because the jurisdictions get some of the payroll taxes.”

Lower paying jobs

One concern raised about the predominance of warehouse and distribution facilities is that they typically pay less than the union automotive jobs that the region lost over the years.

“The concern about logistics jobs and low paying wages historically has always been a concern,” Slaybaugh said. “I think the low unemployment rate has really changed the wage structure for a lot of logistics companies.”

The tight labor market led companies to offer more money to attract workers to warehouse and distribution jobs, but the average hourly wage for stockers and order fillers was $15.85, or $32,977 annually for the five-county Dayton-Springfield region, according to Lightcast’s third quarter federal wage data analyzed by Richard Stock, director of the University of Dayton Business Research Group.

Couriers and messengers, a category that includes e-commerce delivery drivers, saw average annual wages decline from $61,943 in 2016 to $44,966 in 2022 in the Dayton-Springfield region. Stock attributes the decline to e-commerce companies hiring people for less than full-time work.

“The wages in distribution are not what they were in manufacturing. So whether that’s union-related, whether that’s skill-related, probably a factor of both a little bit,” said Larry Jacobs professor of operations and supply chain management at the University of Dayton. “But it is at least something. It’s an entry point to the workforce for non-skilled people.”

And he said some of the companies, with “Amazon kind of being the exemplar, are providing free education. It’s a way for someone to get a college education while working in a relatively clean environment.”

E-commerce business is likely to continue to grow after the COVID-19 pandemic changed people’s shopping habits, said Marvin L. Reid, department chairperson for the Central State University College of Business Administration. He said those jobs are increasingly going be done using automation so people doing that work will need to get additional workforce training so they can get another job.

“If you’re really trying to get those higher paying jobs sometimes you have to retool yourself,” Reid said.

Attraction and retention of talent is the Dayton region’s top priority and workforce development will remain key to bringing more companies to the area, said Jeff Hoagland, president and CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition.

He and others interviewed believe that more of the higher-skill, higher-paying jobs are coming to the region, with Joby and Sierra Nevada leading the way locally, as well as construction of the Intel plant near Columbus and the Honda/ LG Energy Solution electric vehicle battery plant being built in Fayette County.

“The quality of jobs are going up, the pay is going up,” Hoagland said. “And I just think we are going to see more of that.”

Sunday: Commercial development on and around the Dayton International Airport brings jobs, revenue and lots of truck traffic.

Coming Monday: Sierra Nevada Corp. executive talks about why the company picked Dayton and a possible expansion at the Dayton International Airport.

Coming Tuesday: See what local officials, development experts and business leaders say about the booming commercial development around the Dayton International Airport.

Follow @LynnHulseyDDN on Facebook, Instagram and X.