Premier has eyed fairground development for decades

Over the past 15 years Miami Valley Hospital and the University of Dayton joined forces to help revitalize the housing stock in the fairgrounds neighborhood and entice new restaurants and businesses onto nearby Brown Street.

By partnering again – this week they announced a joint venture to buy the Montgomery County Fairgrounds land - local leaders hope the investments the two entities make will be no less transformational.

Premier Health, which owns Miami Valley Hospital, has been interested in the fairgrounds site on and off for decades.

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It has no firm plans for the property, said Mary Boosalis, Premier’s president, but Miami Valley Hospital across the street is landlocked, and the hospital needs to be prepared for future changes in health care that could require new additions or investments, she said.

The hospital system is very sensitive to the interests of the neighborhood and will pursue development that continues to build up the area and community, she said.

“We care about what goes in there,” she said. “I wouldn’t, for example, want some temporary or transient thing going in.”

Miami Valley’s 20-acre campus now includes buildings and parking lots. They also own about 4 acres of small parcels in the nearby neighborhoods.

Premier Health has invested heavily in the hospital campus and surrounding area, and its purchase of the fairgrounds protects the hospital from incompatible uses moving in.

The hospital in 2010 opened a $135 million patient tower and southeast addition. In recent years, it also spent more than $30 million renovating and expanding its neonatal intensive care unit and emergency department.

The fairgrounds purchase is an investment in the future, but it is also an important investment in the neighborhood, because the quality of the surrounding area affects the hospital, Boosalis said.

UD officials told this newspaper they see opportunities for business partnerships on the fairgrounds property that could be economically invigorating.

UD’s partnership with GE Aviation resulted in the opening of a $51 million research center on campus, just south of the fairgrounds.

The school’s partnership with Emerson paid off when the company, earlier this year, opened a $35 million research and innovation center, practically next door to GE’s facility.

But officials with both organizations say they view the property as a clean slate, and they do not have specific plans to share because they have not been developed.

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