CPA firm Clark Schaeffer Hackett plans to exit downtown Dayton and Middletown next year and merge operations into a single office at Austin Landing.

The proposed Miami Twp. location will have an 80-person staff, said Herb Lemaster, managing shareholder of Clark Schaeffer Hackett’s Dayton office.

The firm has extended its lease in Kettering Tower into next year and the building it will locate in has not been built, Lemaster said.

Bringing everyone into a single location will help the company to better use and develop its existing staff and recruit new employees, Lemaster said.

“That is our strongest pull right now, attracting great professionals,” he said.

The CPA firm currently leases about 70 percent of the eighth floor of Kettering Tower, downtown’s tallest office building, Lemaster said. The firm has been located in the downtown since the mid 1980s, he said.

Lemaster, who will oversee the combined office, said the proposed move does not signal dissatisfaction with Kettering Tower or the downtown.

“I think they recognize — and we’ve had many discussions about it — this is not a Kettering Tower decision, this is not a downtown decision,” Lemaster said.

The announcement of Clark Schaeffer’s move comes a day after Kettering Health Network’s announced plans to locate 60 jobs at Austin Landing by the end of this year.

In May, law firm Thompson Hine LLP announced plans to move 100 employees from downtown to the Miami Twp. development.

Sandy Gudorf, president of the Downtown Dayton Partnership, said the firm’s desire to have offices at the midpoint between Dayton and Middletown drove the decision.

“From everything they have told us, they’ve really enjoyed working downtown,” Gudorf said. “Their employees did as well.”

Denise Hamet, acting economic development director of Middletown, said, “We anticipate they will continue to serve Middletown and have a strong community presence.”

The firm was founded in Middletown by Virgil Clark in 1938.