DAYTON — Lion Apparel’s manufacturing facility in north Dayton was destroyed in the Memorial Day Tornadoes, but today they are hosting a grand re-opening and a ribbon cutting.
The company previously planned for the north Dayton manufacturing facility to go along with their Vandalia headquarters, but those plans changed in May of 2019 when the tornadoes swept through the area.
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Lion Apparel is the chief maker of firefighter PPE in the United States and the Vandalia location invested $1.7 million in October of 2018 to renovate the north Dayton facility.
The 55,000 square foot location was expected to create about 75 full-time jobs, according to a release from the company.
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Lion Apparel said nearly 75 percent of the new plant was completely destroyed the night that those tornadoes hit the Miami Valley.
Now that the company was able to rebuild and launch the facility, they are looking to hire staff for multiple production positions beginning at $15 per hour, they said.
“We are very excited to reopen our restructured plant and continue to bring new apparel manufacturing jobs to the city of Dayton,” said Steve Schwartz, Lion President and CEO.
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“This facility will greatly enhance Lion’s existing manufacturing capacity and allow us to continue to improve production and delivery times to meet our customer’s expectations. We thank the City of Dayton, Montgomery County, the Dayton Development Coalition, the Dayton Sewing Collaborative, Citywide Development, and JobsOhio for their support in making this project successful.”
Cox Media Group
