Taking advantage of low interest rates, CareSource is refinancing the bonds that helped the company build its 10-story downtown headquarters.

Leaders of the Dayton-Montgomery County Port Authority are welcoming the move, saying the company is sensibly taking advantage of a favorable interest rate environment.

But the move does mean the loss of an annual $78,000 fee CareSource paid to the port authority, which issued just over $60 million in revenue bonds to finance the project at Main Street and Monument Avenue five years ago.

Jerry Brunswick, the port authority’s executive director, said CareSource is entitled to do this.

“At some time in the not too distant future, we’ll look back at this interest rate environment and say, ‘Wow,’” Brunswick told the port authority’s board of directors Monday.

The port authority projected a net loss of $139,992 for all of 2012, and from January through August this year has seen a $110,110 net loss, according to numbers provided to the port authority’s board Monday. But Brunswick and others said the development agency is doing well, saying that at the start of 2012, the agency did not know about important projects by Abbott Laboratories in Tipp City, White Castle in Vandalia and the Connor Group in Miami Twp.

“We may do better than projected in terms of a net loss,” Brunswick said.

In all of those projects, the port authority has played a role.

“We’ll have more income than we thought,” said Bradley Evers, port authority counsel.

Tarlton Thomas, CareSource chief financial officer, confirmed that low rates are the impetus for the refinancing. Managed care services provider CareSource is one of downtown Dayton’s most important employers. The company has 1,100 employees downtown and has hired some 400 new employees in recent months.

The company is one of five managed care plans chosen by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to provide coverage for people in Medicaid’s Covered Families and Children and Aged, Blind and Disabled programs.