With $35 million from the Ohio Innovation Hubs program, as well as $23 million from local governments and a hoped-for private-sector investment of up to $37 million, the plan calls for an advanced, secure 120,000-square-foot building on 38 acres on the former Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
The new building and the activity drawn there will create an estimated 2,000 jobs, generating some $500 million in new research revenue by the year 2031, advocates of the project say.
The site will be focused on national defense, providing a home for Air Force efforts to harness digital technology in equipping the force and preparing for competition with China.
The largest local investors will likely be the University of Dayton and Premier Health, the two entities who have long championed the idea of an "OnMain" development on the former fairgrounds across from Miami Valley Hospital, Premier's signature hospital, said Brian Heitkamp, chief executive of OnMain.
"We're looking at a roughly 120,000-square-foot facility, five floors, a couple of those floors would have secret SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) capability spaces," Heitkamp said Monday. "That's a fairly large building with a fairly large chunk of secure space in it."
Heitkamp said OnMain principals expect to start speaking with local partners, including the Dayton City Commission, in the next month or so.
"We can't wait to see the building go up on the old fairgrounds property," DeWine said after his public remarks. "It's really a great partnership between the state of Ohio and the local community, the University of Dayton, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, everybody really just coming together."
Imagine a place where a Sinclair Community College graduate trained in the use of drones might work with an electrical engineer trained at the University of Dayton on new drone sensors, said Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.
Young people with an interest in software, hardware, sensors artificial intelligence, medicine and other areas may find a home at this site. "This is bringing that all together — the private sector, the public sector, the education sector, to build the talent, to do the research, to apply it to our military in a way that will secure our nation's future," Husted said.
"It's focused on our national defense, our economic and national security," he added.
"Never before in the history of our nation have we faced a peer competitor and threat the likes of which we see today in the People's Republic of China," said Robert Fookes Jr., a member of the Senior Executive Service (a cadre of civilian executives) and a top engineer at the Wright-Patterson-anchored Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC). "Not even Russia, although formidable, compares."
To stay ahead of the threat, the Air Force is reorganizing, and digital transformation efforts, including digital material management, are part of that, he said.
"We at AFMC have a vision of a digitally empowered Air Force, equipped with an agile and innovative workforce, state-of-the-art tools and technology, the ability to conduct real-time, data-driven and model-centric decision-making," Fookes said.
Working with legislators, the DeWine-Husted administration developed the hubs program last year to spur investment around the state's major metro areas.
DeWine first announced his desire to institute the hubs in a speech at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in February 2023.
Last month, he announced the state's first hub in the Toledo area, aiming to capitalize on what the governor's office at the time called " Toledo's legacy as the glass capital of the world." His office said the announcement represented a $42 million state and local investment.
Up to $125 million is available through the program, and lead applicants can apply for up to $35 million in funding, the Ohio Department of Development has said.
When he first announced his vision for the program at the Air Force Museum last year, DeWine said he had no wish to pre-judge the process.
"Dayton should be very, very competitive," he said then.
Even before the details of the program were nailed down, the presence of Wright-Patterson seemed to give this community at least a leg up in whatever process would be created. The base is home to some of the most important missions in equipping and arming the Air Force, drawing an array of private companies to the Dayton area that want to be a part of that.
Last week, the base and its allies celebrated the fact that the installation now has a higher working population than ever before, some 38,000 military and civilian employees.
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