This site was home to the DK Manufacturing Company, several of its divisions, including Dunbar Kapple Inc., and successor companies, from about 1955 to the early 1980s. The company, founded in 1941, had a diversified product line, including Vac-U-Vator mobile pneumatic grain-handling equipment; boat trailers; and component parts for the aircraft and aerospace industries.

In 1967, MSL Industries Inc. acquired two divisions, which, combined as DK Aerospace Company, produced flex lines and other parts used in the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in July 1969. A connection of note, Marion G. Aldrin née Moon, the mother of Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the lunar module pilot who walked on the moon, spent a portion of her childhood in Batavia.

In the early 1970s, DK Aerospace Company built the vacuum chamber facility, the largest single component of the original Main Accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

In August 1973, the City of Batavia purchased the property, which now encompasses the Batavia Riverwalk, the Jeffery D. Schielke Government Center, and the Flag Day Monument.