Community Tissue Services to Build New Processing Facility
Community Blood Center Community Tissue Services (CBC/CTS) announced today its plan to build a new tissue processing facility on 10-15 acres at the Miami Valley Research Park in Kettering, Ohio. With the assistance of Mark Fornes Realty, and after considering numerous options at the current downtown Dayton location and surrounding communities, the Board of Trustees selected this location. The new processing facility will house more than 150 existing highly-trained employees with 75-100 new jobs over the next ten years. The site is located at the northeast corner of Research Boulevard and College Drive in Kettering. It is a fully developed site with all utilities and roadways in place. This job ready site was chosen to meet the CBC/CTS timeframe.
CBC/CTS has a long-term commitment to serving the Dayton region. The organization has been headquartered in downtown Dayton for 44 years and at the current 349 South Main Street location since 1976. Downtown Dayton will remain the headquarters for CBC/CTS, with more than 250 employees remaining at the recently renovated downtown campus. Blood Services will be unaffected by this expansion and will continue to serve blood donors as usual and provide life-saving blood products to twenty-five area hospitals. Twenty-thousand blood donors visit downtown Dayton each year.
CBC/CTS has been planning this expansion for the last three years. Construction will begin mid 2009 and it is expected to be complete by the end of 2011. Currently tissue processing operations are located at the downtown Dayton headquarters. The new high-tech facility will incorporate state of the art manufacturing capabilities and new class-100 clean rooms to provide tissue grafts for the rapidly changing needs of medical professionals and patients. It is estimated that the total cost will exceed $25 million and will be funded by a combination of healthcare bonds, operating reserves, and fundraising.
Matt Graybill, Chair of the Board's site selection committee announced, "This is the largest expansion project in the history of Community Blood Center. We are very excited to see our nationally-recognized and respected Tissue Services continue to grow. Most people don't know that we are the fifth largest tissue bank in the United States, but expect to hear more about us in the future."
According to David Smith, M.D., CEO/Medical Director of CBC/CTS, "Our current facility limits our processing capabilities due to space constraints. The new facility will more than double our current space and allow us to better serve those in need locally and across the nation. We currently provide about 110,000 tissue allografts each year, including skin for burn victims, tendons and ligaments for athletic injuries, and bone grafts for orthopedic, neurosurgical, and dental procedures. The future of tissue banking is trending quickly towards engineered tissues and cellular therapies. CTS needs this state-of-the-art biotechnology facility to stay at the forefront of new graft technology. With additional space, CTS will be able to expand its research and development program, and more closely work with area universities and businesses." Dr. Smith continues by saying, "CTS continues to undergo tremendous growth which translates into jobs for the Dayton region. We are very proud to be part of the Dayton area community."
"The Miami Valley Research Foundation is very pleased CBC/CTS has chosen the Research Park as the site for its largest expansion" said Bruce Pearson, President/CEO of the Research Foundation. "We are especially excited by the new technologies the Tissue Center will be pursuing such as tissue engineering/regenerative medicine and new tissue grafts. The opportunity to retain and provide a campus environment that allows a successful biotechnology company to stay in the Dayton area is a perfect match with the Research Park mission" Pearson added.
The Miami Valley Research Park is a university-related research park owned by the non-profit Miami Valley Research Foundation. The Foundation was founded in 1980 to foster and promote research, technological, scientific and educational activities which would create or preserve jobs and employment opportunities in the metropolitan Dayton area. Foundation members include Central State University, Sinclair Community College, The University of Dayton and Wright State University. Associate members include the Air Force Material Command, Aeronautical Systems Center and the Air Force Institute of Technology. The 1,250 acre Park includes 300 acres currently developed with 17 buildings totaling 2 million square feet. An additional two buildings with 140,000 square feet are under construction and will be completed by June 2009. Over forty businesses and organizations employ 4,500 people and 3,500 students take classes in the Park.
For more information about the Miami Valley Research Park, visit wwwTheResearchPark.com.
Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services (CBC/CTS), an independent, not-for-profit organization, is ISO 9001:2000 Registered. Community Blood Center is the sole provider of blood components to twenty-five hospitals in the Miami (Ohio) and Whitewater (Indiana) Valleys. Community Tissue Services serves the public through recovery, processing and distribution of human tissue donations used for transplantation. Community Tissue Services is comprised of eight regional offices and two satellite offices: Dayton, Ohio (Corporate Headquarters); Fort Worth, Texas; Fresno, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; and Toledo, Ohio. Satellite locations: Boise, Idaho, and Medford, Oregon.
For more information about Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services, visit
www.cbccts.org or www.communitytissue.org.