Stratos Hilltop, the new office development rising on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base land off National Road, is planned to have its first business tenant: defense contractor MTSI.
The first Stratos Hilltop building is a four-story, 88,000-square-foot structure going up on Wright-Patterson's Area B, off National Road, as reported by the Springfield News-Sun. Ground broke on the building in March 2026, and the newspaper reports the campus will eventually include a pedestrian gate connecting it directly to the base. According to the Dayton Development Corporation, that first structure carries a total project cost of $40 million and is targeted for completion in fall 2027.
A second campus, Stratos Valley, is planned just over the hill on Col. Glenn Highway. Together, the two developments are planned to include eight or nine buildings across more than 40 acres of Wright-Patterson property, with the Dayton Development Corporation separately pegging the overall Stratos buildout at eight to nine buildings across 44 acres with a seven-to-ten-year construction timeline and more than $250 million in total private investment, citing estimates from Synergy reported by WVXU.
How the Base Land Deal Works
Wright-Patterson made roughly 43 acres available for an enhanced use lease starting in February 2025, a mechanism that allows private businesses to operate while leasing federal land, the Springfield News-Sun reports.
The legal structure behind the deal is a 50-year Enhanced Use Lease between the Department of the Air Force and Synergy, under which the developer constructs and manages the commercial office space while the Air Force receives long-term, rent-free workspace, the Dayton Development Corporation reported. Such leases are authorized under Title 10, Section 2667 of the U.S. Code, which lets military departments lease non-excess, underutilized real property to non-federal entities in exchange for cash or in-kind consideration, according to the Legal Information Institute.
State economic development agency JobsOhio has backed the site, providing a $2 million Ohio Site Inventory Program grant to help fund site preparation and speculative space infrastructure, the Dayton Development Corporation reports.
Why MTSI, and Why Now
The company has been expanding its regional footprint in recent years. MTSI completed a separate 10,000-square-foot office expansion in the Dayton area in early 2026, pushing its regional footprint past 30,000 square feet as its Wright-Patt-area workforce surpassed 500 employees, according to a company announcement from MTSI. A request for comment sent to an MTSI representative was not immediately returned, the Springfield News-Sun reported.
Project Outlook
With MTSI identified as the planned first tenant and a groundbreaking held for the Convergence Research Center, the Stratos project is taking shape under the base lease arrangement. The first building's fall 2027 completion target will be an early marker of whether that timeline holds.
