Butler County manufacturing hub leaders undeterred by losing out on large state grant

Construction on the site is underway on Knightsbridge Drive in Hamilton. The goal of the hub is to provide space for joint Butler Tech and Miami programming and for regional manufacturers to locate on site for research and to train the next manufacturing workforce.

Miami officials said they are disappointed, but there is funding in place to continue the project that has already begun, it will just be on a smaller scale to start. The county commissioners gave $10 million plus an additional $5 million as matching money for the grant, the university pledged $20 million, $2.26 million from Butler Tech, $480,000 from Hamilton and a $750,000 state grant for a total of $38.49 million.

Randi Thomas, vice president for the university’s Advancing Strategy, Partnerships, Institutional Relations, & Economy program, said without the state grant they still will be able to renovate 70,000 of the 300,000 square-foot building with funds on hand including 20,000 square-feet reserved for the county’s OhioMeansJobs offices.

The $38.5 million cost includes $11.68 million to purchase the building and renovations. The state grant would have allowed them to renovate more of the building from the get-go and hire more teachers and serve more students. The Hub is scheduled to open in January 2026.

“Do I think our project should have gotten it of course I do, but I’m glad to see that Ohio is moving forward,” Thomas said. “We’re not going to stop just because we didn’t get this one, we’re going to continue to overturn every stone at the federal, state, local and everything else level, industry, so that we can continue to serve the residents of Butler County. Not only to educate and train them but also to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our manufacturing industry.”

Mason Waldvogel, deputy chief of media relations for the state development department, told the Journal-News this was a one-time program and there isn’t any money built into the tentative two-year budget to extend it. They received a dozen proposals, requesting $331.7 million from the “highly competitive” program and “the four strongest proposals were funded.”

The winners were:

According to the state website, “Innovation Hubs combine the talents of leading academic and research institutions, workforce and economic development partners, and private companies to gain a competitive advantage through collaboration.”

The county commissioners say they won’t rescind the $5 million matching money.

Commissioner Don Dixon said although the grant money would have been helpful, the project is still much bigger than they originally imagined.

“It gets a bigger footprint than what they ever thought about starting with,” he said and later added. “This is a huge, huge step forward from what they were looking at to begin with and the county is comfortable with where we are and everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to do. Yeah it would have been nice if they could have gotten the another part from the state, but that didn’t happen so we’ll continue to work on expansion.”

Commissioner Cindy Carpenter told the Journal-News “absolutely not” when asked about possibly recalling the matching grant, “there is some extraordinary work that can happen out of that program, I think we’re going to support it to the fullest. I can’t guarantee we’re going to send them more money, but we really do support the advanced manufacturing hub.”

Commissioner T.C. Rogers said they are still on track with their goal to invest in “transformational” projects.

“We’ll get it done somehow because the bottom line is we want to train workers who will be ready for future jobs and hopefully a lot of them will stay in Butler County,” Rogers said. “That’s the goal.”

Thomas said the goal is still to eventually fill the Vora Technology building. Had they received the state Hub grant he said they could have renovated a minimum of 20,000 square feet of additional space and issued roughly 4,650 STEM (Science,Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) credentials over six years. They have 30 business partners who have signed agreements to bring in their equipment and help train the students, “the good news is this is a hot project, it’s a good project and it’s moving.”

“We just have to go and find other sources and other partners to see the vision and buy into it,” Thomas said. “It just means if you are an industry partner and want to get engaged we just have to say it’s going to be a little bit longer before we can bring you in. But the students are going to be in now.”