The 12.3-acre property was once home to retail anchors, including Elder-Beerman and Eavey’s grocery. Today, it is a mostly vacant concrete slab.
Major portions of the plaza were closed and demolished beginning in 2015, including nearly everything from the former Gangnam Market to the north to the Fairborn Municipal Court building to the south.
The city of Fairborn acquired the property for redevelopment with help from county and state grants.
The location and its proximity to Wright-Patterson make the site uniquely suited to defense-related development, Synergy said in the announcement. Plans for the redevelopment include high-security office and research environments, high-bay areas for advanced manufacturing, and lab spaces for prototyping, research and development.
“A little over 10 years ago, we looked at the redevelopment of the then-standing Skyway Plaza buildings,” said Jerad Barnett, CEO of Synergy and Mills. “With the continued growth and investment within the city of Fairborn coupled with the new and ever-changing needs of our clients who support the U.S. Air Force and other sectors of the Department of Defense, we believe there are great opportunities and are excited to be visioning and planning for the future of a new Skyway Plaza.”
“The redevelopment of Skyway Plaza represents a true turning point for our city,” said Fairborn Mayor Dan Kirkpatrick. “For decades, this site served our residents as a retail hub, and now it will once again serve Fairborn—this time as a center for innovation, jobs and opportunity. With its unique proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the strength of partners like Synergy and the Fairborn Development Corporation, Skyway Plaza is positioned to drive both our local economy and the nation’s defense mission forward.”
The project is currently in the design phase, with initial development activities expected to begin sometime within in the next few months, the city said in the announcement.
The Fairborn Development Corporation was awarded a $1 million grant from the state roughly a year ago to build a 40,000-square-foot SCIF office building at the site. A SCIF, which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, is a secure room for working with classified intelligence information.
The building would also include about 7,500 square feet of high bay space and would be a commercial headquarters for several small to medium suppliers and a management center for Department of Defense research programs, city documents show.
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