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NEW JOBS: The Barclaycard call center opening in Hamilton promises to create 1,500 jobs over the next several years.
Not only is that the single largest announcement for new job creation in at least a decade in the city, it’s one of the largest job-creating business projects of the last decade statewide, according to Ohio Development Services Agency, which administers tax credit agreements with companies.
Hiring kicks off next month. Read today’s column Find a job with Journal-News in the business section for more information.
NEW INVESTMENT: The call center will open at Vora Technology Park, located at 101 Knightsbridge Drive, in Hamilton.
Locals will recognize the address as what was once the former headquarters of Champion Paper in Hamilton and a tour showed Barclaycard will fill some empty offices once occupied by the paper mill’s top administration.
More than $9 million will be invested in renovations and finishes, said Mahendra Vora, founder of Vora Ventures, a portfolio of technology companies and the property owner.
Meanwhile, Green Reclamation Group has invested over $5 million on restoration work into the former SMART Papers/Champion Paper mill property on North B Street. Fundraising is underway to build a sports center at the site. While the business plan is still being finalized, other indoor sports projects have cost in the range of $30 million to $40 million, according to project manager Frances Mennone.
TAXPAYER FUNDS: Hamilton's old paper mill properties may now be attracting new private investment, but taxpayers have helped financed the redevelopment. The city of Hamilton bought for $400,000 the former paper mill on N B Street, and offered an approximately $500,000 nonforgiveable loan to the owner of Vora Technology Park, according to the city's economic development director.
The empty buildings left behind when two historic paper mills closed in Hamilton are now being repurposed for new job opportunities.
First, Mohawk Fine Papers closed in January 2012 the Beckett Mill on Dayton Street. That was followed in March the same year by SMART Papers, formerly Champion Paper, which wound down operations at the North B Street mill until the final shipping, cleaning and utility workers were let go. Years before that, the new headquarters built for Champion on Knightsbridge Drive were emptied due to an acquisition.
It was the ending of an era when more than century-old paper mills closed within months of each other.
“It was a long-term decision not to lay down and play dead,” said Hamilton Economic Development Director Jody Gunderson. “A lot of cities don’t bounce back from that.”
Now those properties are under new ownership thanks to taxpayer assistance.
Just this past week, credit card servicer Barclaycard US announced it will open a call center creating about 1,500 jobs at the former Champion Paper headquarters. The 55-acre, 365,000-square-foot office park is now owned by Vora Ventures and is called Vora Technology Park. But some of the room the credit card servicer Barclaycard will fill at Vora Technology are offices that have sat empty since Champion's administrators vacated them, said property owner Mahendra Vora.
Vora purchased the property in 2005, according to Butler County Auditor’s Office records.
“It was completely empty. There was not a car in the parking lot. There was nobody working in the building,” Vora said.
Plans are to revive the former SMART Papers property on the west side of North B Street, the Champion Paper mill before that, to include three sports venues: an indoor complex with courts and fields, a multi-purpose stadium for potentially professional league use, and a rowing center and boathouse.
A development team behind the project is currently raising funds to build the indoor sports center.
“That was a huge swath of property within eyesight of downtown proper that could have gone in a very bad direction if (the city) had not acted,” said Frances Mennone, the project manager for the development group.
“There are communities all over this country that have old derelict buildings whether in public hands or private hands that are huge problems,” Mennone said.
Over $5 million has been invested on restoration work by Green Reclamation Group, according to Moses Glick, owner of the Pennsylvania-based firm, and one of the members of the team proposing to build the massive sports complex. Green Reclamation bought in 2012 the part of the mill on the west side of North B Street from the city for $1, according to city records.
More than 600,000 square feet of building space was demolished and the remaining 500,000 square feet of former factory floor has been gutted.
Even if a sports center doesn’t come to fruition, “it’s way better than to have a building sitting there with a bunch of paper machines in it rotting,” Mennone said.
Twice a week, Ray Leugers, owner of Raymond's Pizza in Liberty Twp., parks his food truck selling pizza by the slice, salad and beverages outside the Butler County Government Services Building. He's already keeping an eye on the foot traffic at another call center company, StarTek Inc., which opened with the first group of employees in July at 150 High St. Plans are to add a third day for the food truck each week for that location when it's big enough.
The Butler County native thought it was virtually impossible for Hamilton to rebound.
"You begin to think there will be enough foot traffic to support a heavy overhead business like a restaurant," Leugers said. "When the paper mills shut down, when Liberty Mutual bought Ohio Casualty and moved it to Fairfield, thousands of jobs just disappeared."
“It’s encouraging to see,” he said.
City government intervened to help redevelop the properties, providing an approximately $500,000 forgivable loan to help Vora finance the purchase of the Vora Technology Park, Gunderson said. And the city bought the mill property on both sides of B Street from SMART Papers for $400,000. It later sold the building and grounds on the west side of B Street to Green Reclamation Group for next to nothing contingent on the company making the buildings marketable.
Property on the street’s east side is still owned by the city, which is waiting to see if the sports center is built.
“The SMART paper property sits on a river and we’ve really started to work on redevelopment on the riverfront and it makes sense that we control what occurs there,” Gunderson said.
The Mohawk Paper property on Beckett Street has changed hands two times since it was closed, according to county property records online. Mohawk was known for inventing the first cover papers, and Champion for inventing the first two-sided coated paper for magazines.
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