New UD office building: What we know now

Here are four things to know about the announcement:

1. Location

The to-be-constructed building at 1401 S. Main St. will be located between Emerson’s Helix Innovation Center and Universal 1 Credit Union. It will be 38,000 square feet and will include offices for each organization along with shared meeting spaces, according to UD.

RELATED: UD building new office building on South Main 

The university plans to launch construction this year. Once construction starts, the new facility will take only a year to build, said UD provost Paul Benson.

2. The process is far along

But it’s not quite final yet. The last details are being worked out.

Both the foundation and the development coalition have signed letters of intent to lease space in the new facility, UD said Friday. Both the foundation and the coalition are today located downtown in the Kettering Tower, Dayton’s tallest building.

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The new building will put the coalition within steps of General Electric’s $51 million EPIScenter, which opened in 2013, and Emerson’s $35 million Helix Innovation Center built in 2016.

3. Growing is what UD does

Building and expanding have become UD hallmarks in nearly the past two decades.

Land purchases more than a decade ago set the stage for the EPIScenter and the Emerson Helix buildings.

In 2005, UD — then under the leadership of UD President Daniel Curran (today, UD president emeritus) — finalized the purchase of 49 acres of NCR Corp. property for $25 million. The property ran from Brown Street to the Great Miami River.

MORE: Fairgrounds: UD, Premier outline when, where first work could happen

Then, more than four years later, UD purchased 115 acres, including NCR’s former world headquarters at 1700 S. Patterson Blvd. and the 48-acre Old River Park property, for $18 million.

That land today is home to UD’s second biggest building (the former NCR HQ) and is considered the university’s “River Campus.”

By 2009, UD had already invested more than $200 million in new construction and renovation just in the past decade.

4. The former fairgrounds are nearby

Meanwhile, the just-announced building will be close to the former Montgomery County Fairgrounds off South Main, across from Miami Valley Hospital.

UD and Premier Health jointly own those fairgrounds — and the future awaits that property.

The 38-acre fairgrounds redevelopment is one of the most anticipated projects in recent Dayton history. Though Premier and UD have not made a final decision for the fairgrounds, they’ve proposed a number of ideas that include housing, retail and green space.

Planning NEXT, the master planning contracted to the project, in January unveiled the early vision for the fairgrounds, which calls for the first phase of development to have about 245 units of housing, 225,000 square feet of office, 60,000 square feet of retail and four acres of urban agriculture.