UD nearing completion of $13.9M cleanup

UD and NCR land by the numbers

$43 million land purchase

50 acres of brownfields, 115 acres for former headquarters and park

More than $13.9 million in state and federal environmental cleanup grants

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DAYTON — The University of Dayton is nearly finished with the cleanup of more than 50 acres of brownfields and three vacant buildings, using $13.9 million in state and federal dollars to help transform 165 acres around campus.

“Instead of having a lot of vacant buildings and land sitting there we have a lot of exciting redevelopment,” said Chris Lipson, senior development for the city of Dayton, which has served as a conduit for much of the grant funding the university received to clean up the land. UD has long-term development plans for land that could mean hundreds of research and development jobs.

UD provided a 25 percent match for services, Lipson said, to secure the money on top of a $43 million purchase price and other investment in the property. Taxpayers have put in $13.9 million for the NCR cleanup and building renovation plus another $8.8 million in grants to build the new GE research facility, ecords show.

Much of the land was a sprawling factory that NCR razed. Building foundations and debris were buried, which led to the need for environmental remediation, said Rick Perales, UD planning and real estate director.

Without the help of the city and grant funding, the university would have been unable to clean up what is now “some of the most developable land in Dayton,” he said.

Contractors have excavated soil from multiple locations from Brown to Patterson streets to remove contaminants including asphalt, asbestos, volatile organic compounds and other debris, Perales said. The land around the GE site was cleaned to residential standards, and the property between Main and Brown streets will be remediated to commercial standards. Two small excavations need to be completed, and all remediation is expected to be done by summer 2012.

The university recently revised its master plan to address the 165 acres of land purchased from NCR in the past six years, which has doubled the size of the once “landlocked” university. The plan also includes a partnership with Miller Valentine to build a $25 million student residence facility on Brown Street where the former Frank Z Chevrolet once stood.

The needs of UD, which is not significantly growing enrollment but instead concentrating on diversifying its student population, continue to change, said Beth Keyes, vice president of facilities management. The only new facility that university officials have formally announced for the NCR property is a $35 million arts center that has a fundraising campaign under way.

Nonetheless, the university recently received approval for multiple-use zoning for the vacant NCR land between Brown Street and the Great Miami River. Future hopes are for a mix of academic, research and other facilities on the land.

“Another GE would be great,” Keyes said, referring to the research partnership. “What we see in GE is the perfect example of the vision of a mix of corporate, research and academics.”

GE and UD are partners on a $51 million research facility that is supported by $7.6 million in Third Frontier money, $1.2 million in city and county grants and tax abatements worth $622,000 annually to the city and Dayton Public Schools. The project will create roughly 15 jobs initially, but that could grow to 200.

GE has teamed with the University of Dayton Research Institute that moved into the former NCR world headquarters at 1700 Patterson Boulevard. A new alumni center, graduate studies and center for executive leadership also occupy the build. The university has committed more than $12 million to renovating the building in the next three years, school officials said.

The university also owns Old River Park, formally a private park for NCR employees, which the university plans to renovate and eventually reopen to students and faculty.

All these plans are expected to evolve as the schools’ needs change, Keyes said.

“I’ve been here 21 years and I’ve been involved in 10 master plans and that is before we had any land,” Keyes said. “Just having all this land, you can see it will evolve more.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDaily News.com.