Two companies plan to bring 45 new jobs to the Mound Advanced Technology Center, the latest good news at the former nuclear weapons site where more than $50 million in public funding has or is to be spent fueling its commercial rebirth.

The 300-acre site reopened in 2010 after a $1 billion clean-up, erasing environmental hazards left by work done there as part of the country’s development of nuclear weapons.

“We had to decide at that point what do we want to do,” Miamisburg Economic Development Director Chris Fine said. “Do we want to leave it a mothballed defense facility, or do we want to make it an asset?”

On July 17, Miamisburg City Council agreed to commit $25,000 toward expanding Excelitas Technologies Sensors and moving BOI, a high-tech marketing firm, to the commerce park on the edge of downtown Miamisburg.

For Excelitas, it was the second expansion, which is expected to result in the retention of more than 80 jobs and creation of 30 new ones. The expansion also culminates about $20 million in public and private investment in the company’s growth at the Mound.

Excelitas is part of a global company that provides high-tech lighting, detection, and defense-related products.

BOI, started in Washington Twp. home, is expected to spend more than $1.1 million in public and private funds moving from rented space on Byers Road in Miamisburg to a new building at the Mound.

“Were packed in here like sardines right now,” Director of Sales Jason Terry said.

Within three years, the company expects to add 15 new employees to its 24-person workforce in response to demand for its high-tech marketing applications, particularly from Procter & Gamble, its largest customer.

“We work with them on cutting-edge collaboration technologies,” Terry said.

The city commitments helped secure a $200,000 Economic Development\Government Equity Grant from Montgomery County for BOI, and $300,000 from the program for Excelitas.

A $200,000 ED/GE grant helped fund an earlier expansion at Excelitas, formed by four employees after the closing of the federal site. About $19 million from several public sources has funded environmental remediation, roads, demolition and construction, officials said.

The grant funding was crucial to BOI’s decision to move to the Mound rather than West Chester in Butler County, home of the P&G office with which BOI works closely, Terry said.

“The city and county working to keep us here made the decision a lot easier. Had it not been for that, it would have been a lot more practical to move closer to our customer,” Terry said.

The company expects to save $2,000 a month by owning rather than renting its building, Terry added.

BOI will be the 13th company at the Mound, where about 300 people already work. But much work lies ahead at the site.

A $3.5 million project will extend Vantage Boulevard through the site, opening up more than 100 undeveloped acres and enabling travel through the site. It will cost an estimated $22 million to complete the Mound Connector by widening and otherwise improving Miamisburg-Springboro Pike from the new Austin Boulevard interchange to the site. The Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission recently approved $3 million in funding for the second phase of the road improvement.

The Mound was the site of top-secret weapons development work dating back to the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb.

“When they built this thing, they built it off the grid, so to speak,” Fine said. “I think you’re going to see a lot more activity up there once the road is finished.”

Today a museum preserves the site’s past, while signs, a park and golf course encourage visitors to the area, near downtown Miamisburg.

Last week, the availability of a handful of existing buildings was advertised on a board outside the office of the Mound Development Corp., a non-profit set up there by area leaders to lobby and fund the rebirth.

“Mound and Piketon (another nuclear facility east of Cincinnati) were once economic anchors in their respective regions,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in January in a press release about efforts to secure more federal funding. “Ensuring that these projects receive necessary resources will position the sites to lead our state’s economic recovery—attracting businesses and creating jobs.”

So far, no new federal funds have been set aside for the Mound. Meanwhile another company incubated there, the Mound Laser and Photonics Center, is moving to Kettering with $175,000 in assistance from a Montgomery County ED/GE grant. The move puts the company closer to its research partner, Wright State University, as well as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its Air Force Research Laboratory.

Still, officials point to BOI’s decision to build rather than lease as another big step toward creating the future envisioned at the Mound.

“The vision has been for a privately owned technology park,” said Mike Grawulmen, president of the Mound Development Corp. “It’s a real strong signal.”