1,900 permanent jobs expected from Huber Heights complex

Jobs from existing area business will also likely shift to The Heights.

The announcement that a new retail development in Huber Heights could be built has developers concerned about the viability of older shopping establishments in the area. This sign is on Executive Boulevard shows the location of the development.

Ty Greenlees/Staff The announcement that a new retail development in Huber Heights could be built has developers concerned about the viability of older shopping establishments in the area. This sign is on Executive Boulevard shows the location of the development.

ENLARGE PHOTO

The announcement last week that a new retail development in Huber Heights could be built has developers concerned about the the viability of older shopping establishments in the area. This sign is on Executive Blvd. shows the location of the development.

Ty Greenlees The announcement last week that a new retail development in Huber Heights could be built has developers concerned about the the viability of older shopping establishments in the area. This sign is on Executive Blvd. shows the location of the development.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Plan for the Heights, an office, shopping and entertainment complex proposed for Huber Heights

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Randy Tucker and Tim Tresslar, Staff Writers Updated 11:17 PM Saturday, August 27, 2011

DAYTON — A proposed office, shopping and entertainment complex in Huber Heights is expected to generate about 1,900 permanent jobs and 1,400 construction jobs over the course of development, which comes as good news in a metro area with close to 10 percent unemployment. But the impact of those new jobs will be mitigated by several factors, including cannibalizing jobs from existing businesses in the area and the temporary nature of the higher-paying construction jobs.

Still, Huber Heights city officials, who have agreed to provide $223 million in Tax Increment Financing for the project, are confident that The Heights mixed-use lifestyle center will at least help stabilize employment in the area.

“We’re not talking about 20 jobs,” said Gary Adams, Huber Heights’ city manager.

“We’re talking about a pretty substantial number of jobs over several years, and that will certainly be a real benefit to our community.”

Adams noted that more than half of the permanent jobs created at The Heights will be office positions that pay higher wages than the sales and cashier positions that typically dominate traditional retail developments.

‘A job is better than no job’

The Heights will dedicate about 400,000 square feet to office space, which is expected to generate 1,250 new jobs and about $1.1 million annually in income taxes for Huber Heights and $2.3 million for the state, according to an economic impact study.

“Some of these jobs are going to be paying fairly well,” Adams said. “That’s bound to motivate some people who are now unemployed to get off the unemployment roles and become employed.”

The project is also expected to create 400 retail positions, 150 hotel jobs and nearly 100 restaurant jobs as the development is built out in stages, beginning in the next two to four years, developers said.

Those jobs typically pay much lower wages — anywhere from $8 to $12 an hour — than professional office jobs that can pay more than $30,000 a year.

But “a job is better than no job,” said Adams, who said even low-wage occupations can help sustain long-term economic growth.

“When you put people back to work, no matter what kind of job it is, that spawns growth because they have more disposable income and that money turns over in the community, helping other businesses grow and bring in new business,” he said.

Thomas Hall, an economics professor at Miami University, said the only way to measure the true impact of job creation at The Heights will be to look at the eventual distribution of the local work force.

“You can picture a restaurant opening (at The Heights) and employing people, but if that causes a restaurant closure in some other part of town, that’s not positive job growth,” he said.

“It will definitely be a positive in the sense that you will have an increase in employment and more wage earners. The question is, are we talking about a big positive or a fairly negligible positive?”

Hall said that depends, in part, on how many new workers The Heights attracts from outside the area. That could be a very small number, based on projections from developer 201 Corridor Management.

“I think 95 percent of our employees are going to come from the Dayton area because this is not the kind of development where we are going to bring people in from the outside,” said George Jenkins, a partner in the development firm. “There will be new jobs created for new employees, but it won’t be 100 percent new ... there will be some employees that will simply move from one job to another.”

Growth slows for lifestyle centers

Another factor affecting job creation at The Heights will be the mall’s life expectancy.

In the first half of the decade, lifestyle centers grew exponentially when compared to traditional enclosed malls and strip centers. But that growth has tapered in recent years.

From 2001 to 2008, the total leasable area of lifestyle centers as a share of all shopping center space grew 112 percent to 1.8 percent, according data from the International Council of Shopping Centers. Meanwhile, the total leasable area at all shopping centers grew only 19 percent.

Last year, however, only four new lifestyle centers opened for business, and a number of properties fell into bankruptcy or foreclosure, including Downtown at the Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Promenade Shops at Dos Lagos in Corona, Calif.; and Perkins Rowe in Baton Rouge, La.

Experts attribute the decline to overbuilding in many parts of the country, where lifestyle centers were erected too close to one another.

Also, the lifestyle center’s so-called “aspirational shoppers,’’ who paid for high-end merchandise on a working-class budgets, have been more willing to trade down to discount and off-price retailers in these tough economic times.

In the Dayton metro area, retail vacancies have fallen over the last year, reaching 9 percent in the second quarter, according to the latest figures from CoStar Group, a real estate tracking firm.

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