Beavercreek planners OK plans for 55,000-square-foot addition to former spy school building

“This is a speculative development given that our current project under construction at our University Park campus for delivery in February 2024 — a 3-story, 65,000 square foot building — is fully leased before completion,” said Jerad Barnett, Synergy chief executive. “We remain optimistic about the continued growth around Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the defense contractor community that supports it needing additional space to support the Air Force mission.”

In March, Synergy Building Systems broke ground for University Park IV, a new office development for defense contractors, at 3837 Col. Glenn Highway.

Speculative developments are built without end users immediately identified.

Synergy wants to build the expansion on the northwest corner of an 83,000-square-foot existing structure, sometimes called the “ATIC building,” the former home of the Advanced Technical Intelligence Center at 2685 Hibiscus Way.

The former intelligence school dissolved in 2019. A limited liability company associated with Synergy & Mills bought the building at about that time for some $4.2 million, according to Greene County property records.

The new expansion plans called for secure-access parking that will accompany the addition, Beavercreek planning documents indicate.

Beavercreek Planning Commission approved a resolution Wednesday that changes a 50-foot buffer to a 50-foot building setback to accommodate the new parking, reducing the buffer between the building and a residential area to the south. The buffer was created in 2007.

City staff had recommended approving the changes; no residents commented during the Planning Commission meeting.

Hibicus Way runs south from Pentagon Boulevard.

ATIC was created in February 2009 in the Synergy & Mills Development’s Pentagon Park office corridor to provide training in cyber security, counter-terrorism and understanding intelligence documents.

The area has long been home to an array of defense and government-aligned businesses and interests.

In 2014, ATIC purchased about 26,000 square feet of the building at 2685 Hibiscus Way in Beavercreek for $4.78 million.

ATIC drew the attention of auditors of Wright State in 2017. The center became a division of the Wright State Applied Research Corp. in 2016.

But ATIC struggled financially and in 2014 all of its employees were put on Wright State’s payroll under a management agreement that had the university billing what was then the Wright State Applied Research Center for the labor.