More than two decades ago Kettering bought the land after the owner of the Hills and Dales Shopping Center approached the city as the site was deteriorating, Kettering records show.
The city redeveloped the property into a mixed-use business park, sold about 20 acres to businesses that led to a hundreds of jobs and established a 30-year tax increment financing (TIF) district to help maintain the area’s infrastructure, Kettering Assistant City Manager Steve Bergstresser said.
Bergstresser called the upcoming improvement plan “the first major maintenance project we’ve done on Governor’s Place Boulevard since it was first created.”
After buying the shopping center land for about $1.76 million and redeveloping it, through the tax district funding — between $200,000 and $400,000 a year — Kettering was able to recoup the money it invested, Bergstresser said.
The city still has a small piece of land, but most of it is privately owned and home to a variety of businesses anchored by Heapy Engineering, Bergstresser said.
Kettering Health owns land within Governor’s Place that was the focus last year of a proposal to build a Sheetz before the city rejected the plan.
Within Governor’s Place, the city is responsible for resurfacing the road, and maintaining the boulevard area, sidewalks and the park area, Bergstresser said.
“It’s like anything else with landscaping, eventually it becomes to the point where it’s kind of overgrown,” he added.
“And like your own house, you get overgrown landscaping that needs to be refreshed replaced,” he said. “So, we’re kind of in the same situation here where we’re planning a refresh of the landscape areas within the medians.”
The city plans to bid the project next month with work starting in the winter and stretching into the spring and summer, Bergstresser said.
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