The region that President Barack Obama gets a glimpse of today during a stop in Dayton for the opening round of the NCAA basketball tournament has undergone significant changes — good and bad — since he last visited in July 2008 while campaigning.

The $430 million in projects built or planned at the new Austin Boulevard interchange, and the $122 million in upgrades to Interstate 75 that corrected the accident-prone “Malfunction Junction” show progress.

“We’ve had almost $2 billion invested in our community over that last few years, for both public and private projects,” said Phil Parker, president and CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.

“That doesn’t happen every day or every place in these challenging economic times,” Parker said.

Area universities and hospitals have expanded. Dayton’s premier technology campus, TechTown, opened a third building last year on a former brownfield site. Abbott Laboratories plans to build a $270 million manufacturing plant that will employ 240 workers in Tipp City, and the changing nature of war has real implications for the region, not only in the number of jobs needed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the area’s largest employer, but in the types of jobs and scope of work done there.

Still, economic recovery continues to seesaw. In February, 400 employees at Appleton Papers Inc.’s plant in West Carrollton learned three-fourths of them stand to lose their jobs following a $3 billion deal with a Canadian supplier. The workers were “flabbergasted, heartbroken, taken by surprise,” said Jim Allen, president of Local 266 of the United Steelworkers, after the announcement.

The outlook in Dayton, said City Commission Nan Whaley, is one of slow growth.

“I think that 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a huge struggle for Dayton because of the Great Recession,” Whaley said. “I still think we have a lot of work to do, but we’re moving in the right direction and I think we’ll get there.”

Dayton was still the longtime home to the world headquarters of NCR back in 2008. The following year, the technology company announced its departure for Georgia. The abandoned buildings and brownfields are now part of an expanding University of Dayton campus.

“We’re seeing new entries into that old landscape that was NCR,” Parker said.

The University of Dayton has moved its growing Research Institute into the former NCR world headquarters at 1700 S. Patterson Blvd., providing a signature facility for its research arm. UDRI conducts nearly $100 million annually in sponsored research.

GE Aviation is locating an Electrical Power Integrated Systems Research and Development Center on the UD campus off River Park Road, also part of the former NCR properties. The $51 million center on about eight acres is expected to be operational by the end of 2012.

“Since the 2008-09 time frame, Dayton has continued its path from old line manufacturing to advanced manufacturing, information technology, defense, health care and higher education. Those areas have allowed us to rebuild our economy,” Parker said.

Other former manufacturing sites are seeing new life.

Industrial Realty Group, a California-based company that specializes in reusing old factories, plans to redevelop a former GM plant in Moraine and the United Parcel Service-owned freight delivery terminal at Dayton International Airport, for use by a variety of businesses.

A change to the downtown landscape, opening of the CareSource corporate headquarters at the corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue. The 300,000-square-foot, nine-story building marked downtown’s first new office tower since before 2000.

CareSource employed about 750 people, when the nonprofit managed health care plan provider moved into the building in January 2009. The nonprofit has since added 250 jobs to its Dayton operation, said Betsy Woods, spokeswoman for CareSource.

Hospitals in the region also have spent millions of dollars to expand facilities.

• $31 million Dayton Heart & Vascular Hospital opened at Good Samaritan Hospital in 2009.
• Miami Valley Hospital, in December 2010, opened a $135 million, 12-story patient tower, containing a Heart and Vascular Center and the Orthopedic Joint and Spine Center.
• $8.5 million upgrade to the pediatric trauma and emergency center at the Children’s Medical Center of Dayton wrapped up last year.
• $40 million expansion is under way at Grandview Medical Center.

“I do think this is a point of pride for the Dayton region,” Bryan Bucklew, president and CEO of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association said. “It also bucks a trend nationally for hospitals to expand facilities in the suburbs and abandon inner cities. (The expansions) have helped the city of Dayton and the region weather the economic storm.”