Underground utility lines and possibly a new hangar are in the works for a Miami Twp. airport.

The Miami Township-Dayton Joint Economic Development District (JEDD) and real estate investment firm The Connor Group have negotiated for the placement of underground utility lines to serve the company’s new corporate headquarters at the Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport.

And there is the possibility of further construction at the airport southeast of Ohio 741 and Austin Boulevard. According to Terence Slaybaugh, Dayton aviation director, the Connor Group is working on a design for a new hangar as a companion building to its new headquarters. The new hangar would be the north most of hangars already there, Slaybaugh said.

He said the company is considering a possible hangar but has not yet committed to one yet. The Connor Group owns four airplanes at the airport, he said.

The company has a five-year option to build a hangar as a provision in its land lease at the site. “I think they want it,” Slaybaugh said.

Ryan Ernst, a Connor Group spokesman, said another hangar is an idea company leaders have discussed, but he did not know when or if one would be built.

A draft agreement says the JEDD will pay part of the company’s expense in relocating overhead utility lines underground — either 25 percent of the project’s overall expense or $50,000, whichever is less, said Greg Rogers, assistant township administrator. The Connor Group will pay the balance of the project, he said.

The agreement is nearly final, with only minor changes in language ahead, Rogers said.

The Connor Group is building an approximately $16.5 million, 39,000-square-foot new corporate home for about 75 local employees. Local officials have cited the project as what they hope is a first step leading to further development at the airfield close to the new Austin interchange with Interstate 75.

The Dayton-Montgomery County Port Authority agreed to borrow up to $8.35 million from the Ohio Enterprise Bond Fund to help finance the building’s construction.

“I think this is a good development for us,” Slaybaugh said. It will be an example of how the city and a business can work together for development on aviation property, he said.

But placing underground utility lines at the airport will be of only “minimal benefit” to the airport as a whole, Slaybaugh said.

The newly underground power line does serve other businesses, but it is not a transmission line, Lesley Sprigg, a DP&L spokeswoman, said in an email. It is a “distribution” line.

“We have designed the new underground line to preserve the integrity of service to the South Tech Business Park and those nearby residential customers,” Sprigg wrote.

Customers who request lines to be placed underground pay for that work, she added. But DP&L does not ask all nearby customers to share in the cost.

“It’s very expensive,” Slaybaugh said. “The Connor Group is on the hook there for that project, literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.” He estimated it takes about $300,000 to place the line below ground.