Fout Hall is the last piece of blight on the 30-acre Omega Baptist Harvard campus, said Paul Bradley, executive director of the Montgomery County Land Bank.
The 60,000-square-foot residence hall, which has not been used in a couple of decades, attracted vandalism, scrappers, trespassers and pests over the years.
The Land Bank acquired state funding to remediate and tear down the property. The state is covering three-fourths of the demo costs, estimated to be about $595,000. Omega is covering the rest.
This demolition project gives Omega an opportunity to grow and expand, Bradley said.
“There are so many studies out there about how blight just affects mental health, affects housing values and affects crime,” he said.
The campus, located along the 1800 block of Harvard Boulevard in northwest Dayton, looks very different from when Omega Baptist Church bought it from United Theological Seminary (UTS) in 2005.
The church and Omega CDC have invested tens of millions of dollars into projects like senior housing and a community center that offers early learning, adult education and training, life coaching and contains a pediatric clinic.
UTS opened the campus a little more than a century ago, and the seminary originally had six buildings. Omega in the last decade knocked down three of the buildings.
Kent Millard, president of UTS, said many people have fond memories of Fout Hall, which housed many students and faculty over the years. But he said he looks forward to what comes next.
“When you get to be 101 years old, it may be time to go into your next phase of life,” he said. “Well, that’s what’s happening.”
UTS, which has graduated about 10,000 students, moved to Trotwood in 2005. UTS was founded as Union Biblical Seminary in 1871, and is the only existing seminary founded by the old Evangelical United Brethren denomination. Bishop Milton Wright, father of Orville and Wilbur, chaired the board that built the seminary.
Omega says it has no immediate plans for the Fout Hall site when the structure is taken down.
However, Omega is working with a landscape architect to try to restore and refresh the appearance of campus, which was designed by the same man who designed New York City’s Central Park.
“Even though we are talking about a demolition of a building today, what we’re really talking about is a building up of the community,” said Dr. Alonzo Patterson, who serves as chair of Omega CDC’s board of trustees.
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