And then rebuilt, thanks to months of work, quick adaptability and a $3.5 million investment by Vandalia-based Lion, an Ohio and Kentucky manufacturer of personal protective gear for first responders, military and other customers, with some 1,000 workers nationwide.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley first cut the ribbon on the facility just two days before the spate of tornadoes struck late on May 27 last year.
“One of the first calls we made was to Lion to say, ‘How are you guys doing?‘” Whaley recalled Tuesday, seconds before cutting the ribbon once again. “We just had opened the facility.”
Before the tornadoes, Lion invested $1.7 million to buy and renovate the 55,000-square-foot plant, pledging to create 75 full-time jobs.
Today, Lion has 72 workers at the Janney plant, and Steve Schwartz, Lion president and chief executive, said he could easily use 15 more.
In fact, Schwartz issued a familiar lament, saying the challenge of finding qualified workers, even in an era of high unemployment, is hindering Lion’s ability to serve customers, a problem that long predates the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It has not really changed fundamentally,” Schwartz said.
Lion is the largest family-owned manufacturer of first responder personal protective equipment in the United States. U.S. Navy firefighters used Lion gear in fighting the massive blaze that tore through the billion-dollar USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship docked in San Diego last month.
That fire reached temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt aluminum. Lion makes gear designed to help fight those kinds of fires.
The plant’s rebuilding represents " a concrete and steel symbol of Dayton-strong resilience,” Schwartz said.
Rebuilding was anything but easy. It required a timely leasing arrangement with the Dayton Sewing Collaborative in the summer of 2019 that helped the company meet orders.
The day after the tornadoes, Brenda Rex, director of the collaborative, was on the phone with site manager Lisa Burr, offering Lion employees use of the collaborative’s facility at 721 Springfield St.
“We’re putting it back together and we’re growing,” Burr told the Dayton Daily News in December 2019.
Just down the road, a host of other businesses, such as Dayton Phoenix, are rebuilding or are being rebuilt.
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