ASHLAND — Dirt Dawg Excavating officially broke ground Friday morning for its new headquarters.
The company has plans to develop future leasable facilities on the property for other small businesses who need a helping hand to grow.
Located at 1681 Orange Street, near the junction of State Route 58 and the U.S. 250 bypass, Dirt Dawg Excavating unveiled its ambitions during the groundbreaking ceremony. Kevin Kaeser, founder and president of the company, spoke to the crowd about what he envisions for the considerable estate.
“We are looking to put in a street, and we are looking to build some 2,400 to 4,000 square-foot shop buildings with some offices in them — something that we can help the plumbers, the electricians, the smaller excavators — help give them a home when they don’t have the means to purchase a facility or just get started,” Kaeser said. “We are looking to build a lot of those buildings; we’ll own them; we’ll lease them out to those people.
“We’ve been in contact with some other people, some other businesses, that we are looking to bring to Ashland.”
Kaeser and his family are native to Ashland, growing up in the Hillsdale community. They expect the facility to be in operational by autumn.
At one point, the piece of land housed a factory for the U Brand Corporation, but that was demolished several years ago.
“This is a wonderful day for Ashland because we have worked so hard and waited so long to see something productive take place at this site,” said Mayor Matt Miller. “There is a certain theme, a certain common element, that is woven through just about all of the projects you have seen over the last several years.
“They are all about cleaning up the old places, sweeping them away, and building in their place new places.”
During Miller’s tenure as Mayor, there have been numerous negotiations regarding the property’s usage.
However, none came into fruition until Dirt Dawg Excavating and the city came to terms.
Kaeser looks to develop the property over time throughout the coming decade.
“This is a big day for myself, for our whole crew, for the whole Dirt Dawg family,” Kaeser said. “We worked on buying this property for almost two years before we made it a reality.
“We have run this office out of our home office for a long time and this is the next step. We are very excited to see that happen. We are able to do that because of the great employees that we have.”
Dirt Dawg Excavating originally began in 1998 and has since grown to handle municipal, commercial, industrial and residential projects.
