Business Week in Review: LexisNexis campus sold to development companies

9555-9595 Springboro Pike. ICP Image

9555-9595 Springboro Pike. ICP Image

A national development team with a track record of local successes has purchased the LexisNexis campus.

Industrial Commercial Properties LLC (ICP), a Cleveland-based commercial real estate development company, in a joint venture with longtime partner Industrial Realty Group, LLC (IRG), acquired the LexisNexis-occupied office campus in Miami Twp., the companies said Wednesday.

A pioneer in online legal research with a decades-long Dayton area history, LexisNexis said it will remain an anchor tenant in the park.

“Our company has a long history of operations and innovation in Ohio and the Dayton area,” LexisNexis said in a statement Wednesday. “While we no longer own any property in Miamisburg, we have long term leases on two of the buildings on campus (9443 and 9393 Springboro Pike) and we have no plans to leave.”

The 391,000-square-foot campus is located on 60 acres and includes buildings at 9443, 9473, 9555, and 9595 Springboro Pike.

This is the first time the buildings have been on the market.

The post-COVID world probably means less office space, but it will not mean no office space, said Dean Miller, an ICP principal who often works in the Dayton area. He said ICP is confident in the “South Dayton” area, with its ability “to reach down to the North Cincinnati” market for business and workers.

The area is in unincorporated Miami Twp. area, a locale that has no municipal taxes, and it is close to two busy interstates, Miller observed.

Manager to reopen Voltzy’s Root Beer Stand

The long-time manager of Voltzy’s Root Beer Stand is vowing to reopen the Moraine restaurant in part to honor the wishes of its founder, Rick Volz, who died Monday at Kettering Medical Center after a lengthy illness.

“My main goal is to keep his legacy alive, and I promised him I would give it my best effort,” Samantha “Sammy” Bowman told this news outlet in a phone interview. “I know it’s not going to be easy.”

TSamantha "Sammy" Bowman, Left, the manager of Voltzy's Root Beer Stand, will seek to reopen the restaurant to honor the legacy of its founder, Rick Volz (right). Contributed photo.

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Bowman has launched a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $10,000 to “help pay for his funeral and cremation expenses,” and, “with whatever is left over, putting it into reopening Voltzy’s as my own,” she wrote on the fund-raising web site

Bowman said Volz “has been a a big influence on my life. He’s been like a grandfather to me for as long as I can remember.”

Volz, who had no children of his own, had operated the carryout restaurant for more than 30 years, the last 12 at 4668 Springboro Pike. He was known for its burgers and sandwiches — some named after politicians and celebrities — as well as its house-made soups, slaw dogs, coneys and root beer floats. But it was perhaps best-known for the super-sized, high-wattage personality of its owner, who greeted customers by name and delivered good-natured, occasionally R-rated taunts and one-liners in rapid-fired banter with his regular customers, and occasionally even with “newbies” whom Volz thinks can take the ribbing.

If all goes well, Bowman said, she would like to reopen “in the next couple of months.”

Volz had faced a series of health setbacks in recent years that accelerated in recent months. Less than two months ago, in December 2020, Bowman wrote that Volz had undergone a below-the-knee amputation of his right leg. Volz had been open about his previous surgeries in which he had toes and part of his foot amputated.

The GoFundMe.com campaign is entitled “Remembering Voltzy.”

Brewery wants to open second tap room

Yellow Springs Brewery is seeking approval to open a second tap room in a former bowling alley that the brewery purchased in 2016 for storage and distribution.

Plans call for opening a barrel room as a secondary tap room at the former Village Lanes bowling alley at 1475 Xenia Ave., in a facility the brewery now calls the South House building, Lisa Wolters, co-founder of the brewery, told this news outlet this morning, Jan. 29.

A sampler board at Yellow Springs Brewery in Yellow Springs. FILE/CONTRIBUTED

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“We will still be doing our brewing at the Millworks/Walnut Street location, but the barrel-aging will take place in the Barrel Room at the South House,” Wolters said. “We will be increasing our variety of products — barrel-aging and eventually sours — and offer more space to enjoy our beer in a safely distanced manner.”

Yellow Springs Brewery has applied to the Ohio Division of Liquor Control for a license to accommodate those plans, and will release more details about the second tap room when the brewery’s owners obtain the necessary permits, Wolters said.

The brewery, which opened in April 2013, had previously expanded its operations at its brewhouse and tasting room at 305 N. Walnut St. Yellow Springs Brewery has evolved into a regional powerhouse among Dayton-area craft breweries, with its canned and bottled beers available in multiple retail markets in southwest and central Ohio.

Leidos land Air Force contract work

Leidos has won a $68.6 million Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) contract to work in the arena of electronic warfare.

The Fortune 500 company is based in Reston, Va., but like many defense contractors with local offices, has a presence off Pentagon Boulevard in Beavercreek.

The award is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with cost-plus-fixed-fee task orders for the “Threat Assessment and Aircraft Protection Defensive Electronic Warfare” program, the Department of Defense said Wednesday.

Leidos corporate image

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This program will conduct research to design expendable ordinance and directed-energy (signal) countermeasure concepts, in electro-optical and multi-spectrum electro-optical/radio-frequency domains, in response to “an ever-changing missile threat landscape using threat exploitation,” the DoD said.

In general, electronic warfare can refer any military activity that uses electromagnetic energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum in battle.

In August, Leidos won a nearly $59 million order from the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, in Lexington Park, Md., to develop adaptive radar countermeasures hardware and software.

The new AFRL contract will also involve modeling and simulation evaluation, hardware and field testing.

Work will be performed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where AFRL is headquartered and much of its work is conducted, and is expected to be completed by Jan. 29, 2025.

Starbucks property sold

A Los Angeles limited liability company is the new owner of the Brown Street Starbucks.

PSMKK LLC bought the Starbucks franchise property at 1134 Brown St. for $715,000, Montgomery County records show. The seller was 113 Brown Street Partners LLC, also based in California, who bought the property in November 2017 for just over $641,000.

Loopnet listed this property as a “net leased offering” imposing “minimal landlord responsibilities.” That means the lessee or business using the property pays at least part of all the taxes, insurance fees and maintenance costs.

Records give the sale date for the local property has Jan. 21.

The site has operated since 2001 on what has become — at least before the pandemic — an increasingly busy section of Dayton near the University of Dayton.

Founded in 1971, today Starbucks has nearly 33,000 stores worldwide, according to the company.

MOD has local co-op program

The Modern College of Design has started a co-op program involving more than 10 businesses and organizations, most of them in Dayton its metro area.

The Modern College of Design in Kettering has started a co-op program involving more than 10 businesses and organizations, most of them in Dayton its metro area. FILE

Credit: FILE

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Credit: FILE

The program helps the college’s students gain professional leadership and design experience while meeting job requirements toward a new bachelor’s degree completion program, according to MCOD President Jessica Barry.

The participating business, according to the college, include:

•Better Business Bureau, Dayton.

•Boom Crate, Dayton.

•Dragonfly, Dayton.

•Erica Fit Love Studios, Dayton.

•Jafe Decorating Inc., Greenville.

•Life Church, Oklahoma City.

•Olberding Brands, Cincinnati.

•Stratacache, Dayton.

•Theta Design Co., Dayton.

•University of Dayton Athletics, Dayton.

•YSI, a Xylem Brand, Yellow Springs.

Taitech lands AFRL contract

A Beavercreek research company has received notice of a new $31.5 million Air Force Research Lab contract.

Taitech Inc. has been awarded a not-to-exceed $31,587,310 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for technology for sustained supersonic combustion — or “TSSC,” the Department of Defense said.

The mission of TSSC is to provide research and development for investigation of basic concepts, components, sub-systems, and diagnostics, for high-speed air breathing propulsion systems, airframe structures and internal/external aerodynamics including integration into air vehicles, weapons and launch systems, the DoD said.

Work will be performed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and is expected to be completed by February 2028.

Passenger traffic at Dayton airport dramatically down

Airline passenger demand took a nose dive during the pandemic last year on the scene, and numerous factors are leaving the question of when it could recover up in the air.

Enplanements, a measure of the number of passengers boarding a plane, plummeted at Dayton International Airport from 892,414 enplanements in 2019 to 337,517 passenger enplanements in 2020, a 62.2 percent drop, according to statistics recently released by the airport.

Enplanements, a measure of the number of passengers boarding a plane, plummeted at Dayton International Airport from 892,414 enplanements in 2019 to 337,517 passenger enplanements in 2020, a 62.2 percent drop, according to statistics provided by the airport.

Credit: JIM NOELKER

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Credit: JIM NOELKER

That colossal drop mirrors one experienced by the industry as a whole nationwide, with U.S. airlines reporting 27 million originating passengers in the third quarter of 2020, down from 86 million passengers a year earlier, a 68.6 percent drop, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).

The airline industry right now is seeing “a bit of a rebound” at the start of 2021, according to aviation expert Jay Ratliff.

A typical day, the TSA screens 2 million people nationwide and as many as 2.5 million during November and December, Ratliff told this news outlet Friday. Travel numbers during the pandemic dropped as low as 87,000 people flying on one day last April, a 95 percent decline.

“That was the bottom,” Ratliff said. “We use that as the scale moving forward.”

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