20-acre Army Reserve Training Center is first tenant in Industrial Park

The center

The Army Reserve Training Center’s 20-acre site will include:

TRENTON — The city has tentatively landed the first tenant for its Industrial Park on Wayne Madison Road.

Trenton officials recently accepted an option from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to purchase 20 acres for $700,000 to build an Army Reserve Training Center.

The center is expected to bring about 300 trainees from greater Cincinnati to the city and surrounding areas on the weekends, in addition to 10 full-time employees who will be housed at the 36,000-square-foot, one-story facility, the city said.

Construction is expected to start later this year or in early 2011, after sanitary sewer and gas services are extended to the 175-acre site, the city said. The option to purchase the property is contingent on the sewer and gas service extension, the city said.

There will be a variety of training activities to occur at the center, said James Foster, Trenton’s economic development director.

“One of them is the use and maintenance of military trucks. They told us that there’s not going to be any artillery or anything like that,” he said.

City Manager John Jones said the training center is exactly the kind of project the city wanted in the park first.

“Their beautiful building will establish the aesthetic standard we want, and the 300 trainees at the site on weekends will be patronizing Trenton-area businesses. We know this is what the city needed to have happen on this property to establish the Trenton Industrial Park in the minds of the development community,” he said.

Frank Schmitt, a realty specialist with the Army Corps of Engineers, said the decision to build a training center in Trenton was based on the location.

“We came up and searched the Greater Cincinnati area and the I-75 corridor, and we looked in Monroe, Middletown and all those little towns around there, and I went and pulled sites that were available and would probably suit our needs. They liked the Trenton area — it was within their budget, they could take as much land as they needed, and it had good access to the expressway,” he said.

“This is a grow-the-Army project, which means that these are units in addition to other units. We need a new facility to accommodate these people.”