Nick McWilliams reporting – Some of the early layouts and plans for a major development site in north Dover were discussed during the latest council session.
Council met virtually with Rico Pietro from CRESCO Real Estate from the Cleveland area, who has been hired by an investment group to market the 67-acre site, which was purchased by Lauren International CEO Kevin Gray and Mike Davis and Jeff Mathias of New Philadelphia.
Pietro discussed an economic impact analysis with city leaders, claiming that Dover and constituents would see sizable tax benefits.
“Our projections, and being conservative with the numbers, look at taxed revenue coming to the city of Dover in the neighborhood of $175,000 per year. And money coming to the school district between $450,000 and $500,000 per year, with $200,000 coming to the county, and a big number with sales tax going to the state.”
Roughly 250 permanent jobs are also expected to be created by the site.
Pietro says that the primary focus of the development will be on traditional retail like pharmacies, fast food, medical office buildings, and potentially boutique-style grocery stores.
A planned manufacturing-use space is also planned on the property, and around a quarter of the acreage is also left open for potential expansion of local businesses.
Pietro said that the projected construction dollars needed for all buildings on the initial plans would go well into the eight-digit range.
“An example is, the large purple building [in the above photo] at the back of the site, the manufacturing building, is probably an $8 to $10 million building. The small buildings facing Wooster Avenue are probably $2 million buildings. The idea of those properties, if we took a conservative number, only building out three quarters of the available land, we came up to a total project investment cost of about $41 million.”
He adds that the real estate firm and developers will work closely with the city to improve the marketing of the site to be more attractive for interested businesses and companies to move in.
Construction is expected to start when an interested tenant commits to coming to the site, according to Pietro, and that he expects project proposals by the spring or summer of 2023.
He also said that all development would be made with the intent to not encroach on residential properties in the north end of Dover.
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