Officials: Thanks to Spooky Nook, companies are knocking on Hamilton’s door

Now that the gigantic Spooky Nook indoor sports complex and convention center project has broken ground in Hamilton, numerous companies have been contacting the city, wanting to know more about development opportunities, officials say.

“I will tell you the level of development interest that we are seeing today versus any point in the 8 1/2 years I’ve been here is not even close,” City Manager Joshua Smith recently told Hamilton City Council. “And typically, the first question that is asked is, ‘Where’s Spooky Nook at? What is the timeline? When is it opening?’

“And everyone from the folks that own the Ohio Casualty complex, which is almost 500,000 square feet in our downtown, (who) traveled out to Pennsylvania to meet with the Spooky Nook folks in the last two weeks, to some of the largest regional development companies that are asking, ‘What’s available downtown? What’s available with respect to empty land?’ because there’s interest in new hotel construction and other things.

“A lot of the things that we’ve worked on, at least during my time here, with this city council, has been how do we set the table to keep bringing in development, to keep our revenues sustainable, so we can keep providing the core services that residents want?”

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