The StoryPoint project, a planning independent living, assisted living and memory care facility, already is being developed on the site. But the city and township have much larger plans for the area, including class-A office spaces, extended-stay hotels, a Kettering Network health campus, restaurants and retail, and social-service agencies, as well as a parking garage.
“We have the opportunity to create a first-class office park that will leverage Hamilton’s city and cultural amenities with township retail and residential opportunities,” Hamilton City Manager Joshua Smith said of the project in 2017.
Duke in 2017 sued the city and township, arguing it has exclusive rights to provide natural gas and electric service to entities in the area.
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Jim Logan, Hamilton’s executive director of infrastructure who oversees the city’s utilities, said Hamilton is providing power to the StoryPoint development.
“We both have utilities in the area,” Logan said about Hamilton and Duke.
An advantage to companies within the development area of using Hamilton’s utilities is they will have “six services on one bill,” Logan said. They can choose to use Duke utilities.
“If a developer comes into the JEDD (joint economic development district) and they want one entity to deal with, they come to the city, we sit down, we walk through connecting all services,” he said.
Even though Butler County provides sewer and water services, “we work with Butler County, but we have a very good relationship with them,” Logan said.
“The other significant benefit that often gets overlooked is our line crews and our distribution technicians, they serve 26 square miles,” Logan said. “So if we have an outage, we dispatch them within 26 square miles. Our footprint is small, we respond very quickly, and when you have an outage at a place like a StoryPoint, you can literally call one person and get up the chain of command as fast as anywhere.”
Sally Thelen, spokeswoman for Duke, said the company is defending its right to continue a “long-standing history of providing gas and electric service” to Fairfield Twp.
“We fully support the ability for customers to choose who they buy their commodity from at the lowest prices through customer choice,” she said. “This lawsuit concerns a narrow issue related to service territories in the state of Ohio and the entity that may lawfully provide natural gas and electric service within a jurisdictional boundary. Duke Energy will work vigorously to maintain its customer base that it legally has the right to serve.”
The lawsuit is before Butler County Common Pleas Judge Greg Howard. He has scheduled a trial for Oct. 14.
Serving a new territory has another advantage for Hamilton’s utilities. With the departures in the past decade of paper mills and other industries, the city has found itself with long-term contracts to buy more electricity in future years than it needs. The city has been buying that power, as it is required to under the long-term contracts, and then selling it off at a loss.
The city in the past year or so has been working to sell those long-term contracts to other utilities and also has been working to attract new companies to the city, who also will use additional electricity.
When the proposed gigantic indoor sports complex and convention center called Spooky Nook at Champion Mill opens in mid-2021 at the former Champion Paper site, it will be a top 15 user of electricity for the city, and a top 5 natural gas consumer.
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