ONTARIO, Ohio – Ontario City Council will get answers about the city’s former General Motors property at its next meeting.
Representatives from the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust will talk with council starting at 7 p.m. during its Nov. 5 meeting in the Hellinger Municipal Building.
Ontario Mayor Randy Hutchinson said the trust offered to attend the meeting to answer council’s questions.
“We’re just trying to get the status of what’s happening with the cleanup at GM,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve had contact with the [Ohio Environmental Protection Agency], and RACER Trust is going to give us an update of where everything is at.”
The RACER Trust was created in 2011 by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to clean up and prepare for redevelopment properties owned by the former General Motors Corp., including the forming stamping plant in Ontario.
According to trust spokesman Bill Callen, RACER will be represented at the meeting by Pam Barnett and Patricia Spitzley.
Barnett is the trust’s cleanup manager in Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; while Spitzley is the trust’s deputy redevelopment manager.
An Oct. 23 news release from RACER Trust stated that the trust received approval from the Ohio EPA to remove a patch of contaminated soil from the former Ontario Stamping Plant property
Removal is expected to take place before the end of October.
“Our environmental team worked closely with Ohio EPA to document the scope of the remedial work and to develop a plan to carry out safe, protective remediation,” said Elliott P. Laws, of EPLET LLC, an administrative trustee of RACER Trust. “We look forward to completing the work quickly and to seeing the buyer make good on its promises of new investments and jobs for the property in the near future.”
According to the release, the cleanup location consists of about 1,000 square feet, in which an estimated 2,085 tons of contaminated soil will be excavated and taken to an approved offsite location for disposal and will be replaced with clean soil.
“Then we’ll move toward closing this out and requesting the covenant not to sue [from the Ohio EPA],” Callen said.
Once the cleanup is complete, RACER will submit a No Further Action package to the Ohio EPA, which provides the the information it needs to “guarantee further environmental enforcement action related to previous activities are not pursued.”
RACER sold the property, now known as Ontario Business Park, to the Brownfield Communities Development Company (BCDC) in 2012, at which time the trust said the property was ready for redevelopment. Ontario Business Park is a joint venture between the Adler Group, of Miami, Florida; and the Hilco Trading LLC, of Northbrook, Illinois.
According to a previous comment from Ontario Councilman Mark Weidemyre, there are two companies looking to go into the former stamping plant
“Folks are looking forward to meeting with the mayor and council and answering any questions they may have,” Callen said.
The property, located at 2525 W. Fourth St. in Ontario, spans 267 acres.
