ASHLAND — The Ashland County Board of Commissioners has spent $289,681.20 on the vacant Pump House building on Orange Street since September 2020, when commissioners made the controversial purchase.
That money, however, could be recouped through the charm of Ashland Mayor Matt Miller, who said he has shown the century-old building to developers from Columbus, New York City and others he described as “well-financed” who all fancy capitalizing on the vision behind the so-called Pump House District.
Selling the building wasn’t always on the table and public records reveal it took spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to realize the original plan might not be feasible.
When commissioners voted 2-1 to purchase the building in 2020, the plan entailed moving various county offices into the 44,000 square-foot building.
In the months that followed, however, the county paid for architectural services, repairs to the roof, utilities and insurance for the vacant building.
By the numbers: breaking down $284,250.07
That figure includes the building’s $146,000 purchase from the Ashland County Land Reutilization Corporation. It also includes utilities on the three- and four-story brick building, repairs, insurance and architectural services.
Nikki Hiller, the clerk for the commissioners office, said the county does not subcontract maintenance costs for cleaning, mowing or snow removal. She also said there is no money planned for rehabilitation or development of the building.
Dennis Harris, the county’s maintenance supervisor, said his staff spends minimal time at the building for maintenance.
During the winter, staff removes snow to allow for easy access inside. In the spring and summer months, Harris said he uses inmates from the county jail to mow.
“So that’s free labor,” he said, adding mowing occurs once a week during spring and maybe every other week in July and August.
Aside from the purchase price, the building’s costliest feature has been its utilities. The county has paid a combined $60,420.81 in electric, gas and water bills since October 2020 through April and May, according to a county spreadsheet that tracks monthly utility costs at county-owned buildings.
The spreadsheet lists gas, water and electric for two separate portions of the building on Orange Street.
The next big ticket item was the commissioner’s hiring of Felty-Heinlen Architects and Planners Inc., an architecture firm based in Mansfield.
Commissioners hired the firm in January 2021, four months after the purchase of the building, to come up with a programming and conceptual floor plan design. According to the contract, the county would not pay more than $47,520 for the service.
For $40,747.50, the county found out fulfilling the firm’s conceptual design would cost $13.8 million — a plan that involved reconfiguring the parking lot, partial demolition, renovation and an addition.
The firm produced a phased design for the project in September 2021. The document included estimated prices for design concepts for the building’s parking lot, demolishing portions of the third and fourth floors, renovating other portions, building an addition and architectural fees.
Felty-Heinlen’s $13.8 million figure was millions more than officials originally thought it could cost to renovate the building. Commissioners, before voting on the purchase, initially estimated it would cost around $2 million to renovate the entire Pump House building.
Commissioner President Jim Justice, who at the time served as vice president, dissented, saying the purchase did not make sense during a pandemic that required governments everywhere to cut cost ahead of a forecasted economic downturn.
Commissioners Denny Bittle and Mike Welch approved the purchase, despite hearing dissenting opinions from Ashland County Auditor Cindy Funk and Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell.
Tunnell, at the time, urged the commissioners to think about ongoing costs of the project.
“I think, if this were just a private transfer, if someone was looking at selling this thing to you at this price at this time, when your financial advisor — in Ms. Funk, the county auditor — is telling you now is not the time, and your attorney — the county prosecutor — is telling you, this isn’t a good idea at this time, I think you guys would be pumping the brakes,” Tunnell said.
When asked about the commissioners’ purchase of the building now, Tunnell shows a similar sentiment.
“I didn’t understand the Pump House building then, I don’t understand it now,” he said, adding the vacant building is a “money pit.”
Funk, when presented with the amount of money spent on the building since the purchase, questioned the future of the building.
“We’ve paid ($143,000) on a building that we’re not using. How much longer are we not going to use the building or the land?” she said, using a figure that excludes the county’s initial $146,000 spent on the building’s purchase.
Commissioners also hired Jezerinac Geers Structural Engineering for $3,493.75 to determine a load capacity for each floor in the building.
Crews from Jezerinac visited the building in June 2021, according reports the firm produced for commissioners. The firm determined the building’s four-story portion had floor capacity loads of 100 to 145 pounds per square foot.
The International Building Code requires floors to have a load of at least 50 PSF.
The firm, in its report, wrote “the building is found to be in good structural condition” but noted the 80- to 110 year-old building has “random cracking” on walls, some missing bricks in other places and the three-story portion of the building has “some cracking and splitting of the wood that should be monitored into the future.”
The firm was unable to determine a floor load for the building’s second level, in both the three- and four-story portions. So the county hired them to come out again, a month later, to investigate more.
The Jezerinac crew still wasn’t able to determine a floor load capacity, noting differences in framing between the floors in the south end and the northeast end of the building. In the northeast area of the three-story portion of the building, the firm noted a “significant difference” in framing design that displays “overt structural concerns that would call into question the overall integrity of the framing at this time.”
Nevertheless, Jezerinac said the unique framing in those two areas pose “relatively minor” issues considering the overall size of the building.
There were several other costs associated with the building shortly following the commissioners’ purchase.
Just days following the September 2020 purchase, the commissioners paid A&M Fire and Safety $4,757.14 to repair the building’s sprinkler system.
A month later, commissioners paid Harris Welding $2,345 to repair a ladder on the building.
In November, they hired Mowry Builders $10,375 to repair the roof and paid Ashland Comfort Control $18,989 to replace the building’s boiler.
Worner Roofing Company Inc. was hired in January for an emergency roof repair. That bill came out to $2,553.
A trial run
County commissioners tried using the building when it allowed the county’s juvenile probation department to move in to a portion of the Pump House and occupy it rent free.
The move, which occurred in April 2021, didn’t last.
The department moved out four months later in August because commissioners informed the department the building couldn’t be heated properly during the winter months.
Judge Karen DeSanto Kellogg said she was informed by the commissioners that the probation department needed “to relocate as they would not be able to maintain heat through the winter in the Pump House,” she said in an email.
The warning came despite commissioners spending nearly $19,000 on a new boiler. According to the quote commissioners approved unanimously on Nov. 19, 2020, the new commercial boiler was intended to heat the entire building.
“There were three (boilers.) We just needed one to maintain temperatures above freezing. The old ones were unreliable, old, antiquated,” Harris said.
Harris said the new boiler, a 500,000 BTU unit, could have been used for occupation but another might be in order if more portions of the building are to be used.
Nevertheless, the building — which also came without air conditioning — wasn’t a good fit for the probation department.
DeSanto Kellogg said a probation department has special concerns when it comes to security for clients that involve juveniles and adults.
“With a large building, we were only occupying a small portion of that. You have to make sure clients are not traversing the building,” Kellogg said.
Had the department been there longer, plans for a secure entry system would have been developed, she said. Using the Pump House building was always a temporary solution, the judge said.
Shortly after occupying the seat in early 2021, DeSanto Kellogg said the lease of the juvenile probation’s offices at 128 Church St. was set to expire.
“The lease for 128 Church Street had ended. The building sold. The new owner agreed to a brief extension of occupancy. The probation department occupied the space through the extension,” the judge said in an email, adding the new owners planned to occupy the building, so renewing the lease was not an option.
“It was a whirlwind of coming into office,” she said, noting the temporary move to the Pump House filled a need at the time.
The probation department now occupies office space in a building next to the county courthouse on Second Avenue.
In all, the probation department’s move cost $3,561.75, which included using Mitchell and Sons Moving Inc. and the hiring of Kahl’s Telecommunications to set up electric needs for a tutoring space used by probation staff and moving over an existing phone system to the Pump House building.
DeSanto Kellogg said those expenses came from lines in the court’s budget, but “these funds were not county general fund expenditures.”
Instead, the money came from funds held by the court designated for operation and maintenance of the juvenile probation department. She said the money was obtained through a state grant.
What does the future hold for the Pump House building?
That’s the million-dollar question.
If you had asked commissioners a few months ago, the answer might have been the same: eventually renovate part or all of it in order to house county offices there.
In March, however, the commissioners agreed to purchase a building on 1211 Claremont Ave. — and said the plan there is to move the Ashland County Health Department and EMA offices into the space.
The move, to Ashland Mayor Matt Miller, signaled a departure from the original plan to use the Pump House building. The mayor said he approached commissioners on whether they’d be comfortable with him showing the property to developers.
They gave Miller the keys to the building.
“I still have them,” Miller said with a laugh.
In recent interviews, Bittle, Welch and Justice have said they would be open to selling the building for which they’ve spent nearly $300,000 since owning it.
“I’d be happy if we got back what we have in it,” Justice said. “I just don’t see if we can afford to do anything with it, because it’s so big to keep up.”
Bittle said his mind was always with the future when it came to the Pump House building. The almost $300,000 spent on the building has been well worth the investment, even if selling it to a developer was not always on the table, he said.
“We felt that at some point, it would be future development for the City of Ashland. So it was important to control everything. There’s always been a vision of development on that Pump House corridor,” he said.
Welch said the possibility of selling the Pump House became clearer when he and his co-workers realized how much money it would take to make it viable for various county offices.
When the 1211 Claremont Ave. building went up for sale, he said it “helped solidify getting rid of the Pump House.”
Buying the Pump House was the right decision, he said.
“What if we didn’t buy it? And it had no heat in there — that would put a damper on future development … And now we might sell it. There’s no doubt we’ll get our money back. I know there’s interest. There’s potential,” Welch said. He said there hasn’t been any figures or offers.
Miller said he has walked through the building with four developers — two of them from New York City and Columbus — in the last several weeks. He declined to offer any details about those developers’ plans.
There are clues about those plans.
They are seen in recent moves by Ashland City Council’s to purchase certain properties in what’s been called the Pump House District.
Since early April, the city has purchased four properties from the county and two others owned privately in order to, according to the mayor, combine them into one parcel and sell it to a developer who wants to make the Pump House District a reality.
Miller said the developer — a man from Columbus — plans to build three separate apartment buildings totaling up to 150 units. The buildings would form a “U” around the 14-acre field that used to house the F.E. Myers Pump complex. The city paid $436,000 to demolish those buildings in 2019.
The plan for the 14-acre field, bordered by Orange, Union and Fourth streets, is to build an “Urban Meadow,” Miller said. Officials have said the $150,000 park, covered by state grants, would feature ultra-modern art, concrete walking pads, a steel tree, outdoor musical instruments and a sun dial.
Miller declined to identify the Columbus developer, citing ongoing negotiations, but said the he has experience working various projects across Ohio.
The Columbus developer’s plans are separate from those involving the former Hess and Clark property.
Miller said a developer out of Arizona, John Pacheco of Abacus Industrial Development, is currently working on lining up funds to build what he’s called the Parkview Apartments, a seven-story apartment building with 150-300 units that will overlook the Urban Meadow.
The city acquired that property in 2019 and sold it to Abacus for $100 in exchange for the removal of the decaying structure. Demolition there wrapped up in late 2021.
Pacheco declined to comment, saying “We don’t get involved.”
As far as a timeline on construction on all the projects, that remains to be seen. Miller is hopeful the Pump House District could be built up in the next 18 to 24 months.
