To celebrate 10 years of local journalism, Richland Source is revisiting some of its previous coverage and updating the community on the stories we’ve told. In this article, we look back and ahead at the Westinghouse site. This became one of the region’s biggest success stories over the past decade.
p.s. Join us this Saturday for SourceFest, a free block party we’re throwing in celebration of a decade in local news. Click here to RSVP.
MANSFIELD — The demolition and clean up of former Westinghouse factories on the city’s east side is not just one of the biggest stories in the 10-year history of Richland Source.
It’s one of the biggest stories of the last three decades in Mansfield.
And the potential for redevelopment on the massive site could be one of the biggest stories of the next generation.
Richland County Commissioner Tony Vero, who helped form the “Team Westinghouse” effort that led to the demo/cleanup said the work at the entire site should be done in the next three months.
What comes next may be even more exciting, said Vero, a member of the Richland County Land Bank board.
“Both the Ohio EPA and the federal EPA are looking favorably at awarding grants to the Land Bank,” Vero said, “to not only look at the best means for the property, but also to get the property into a usable state that can be anything — commercial, residential or a mix of both.”
“It’s great that we got the building down and the site being cleaned up. But we don’t want 14 acres to just sit there not being used,” he said.
Westinghouse, once the city’s largest employer with more than 8,000 workers, closed its local doors for good at the end of 1990, ending a run that began in 1918. The property featured 16 buildings over 42 sprawling acres.
One of those buildings was the former “A” building, a five-story, decaying failure that sadly dominated the east end skyline at 200 Fifth St. for the past three decades.
The rotting building, snug against the railroad tracks, was perhaps the biggest single remaining symbol of Mansfield’s industrial past, meshed against the adjoining 13-acre “concrete jungle” remaining from other Westinghouse structures.
The costs of demolishing and cleaning up the potential brownfield scared away local leaders for 30 years.
Seeds of change were sewn when the state set aside $500 million in its biennial budget in 2021 for demolition and brownfield remediation. That budget guaranteed $1.5 million for each of Ohio’s 88 counties and allowed applications for more via organizations like the Richland County Land Bank.
The federal government added more through the American Rescue Plan Act, which gave the City of Mansfield and Richland County governments about $44 million between them.
The mental work began in April 2021 when Richland County Commissioner Tony Vero, a member of the Land Bank board, was driving by the site.
“I was going to the Edge Plastics ribbon cutting on April 21 and I drove by the former Westinghouse building on the way,” Vero told Richland Source at the time. “It’s obvious to me and everyone else that the building has been in a rough state.
“I looked at the building and I said to myself, ‘You know what? I think it’s time we start looking at doing some things.’ “
Thus began a rapid public/private effort that took a giant step forward in August 2021 when the Land Bank agreed to a contract that set the stage for the quasi-public agency to take ownership of the property and begin to plan for the demolition and cleanup.
There were legal property hoops to jump through for the Land Bank to acquire the former “A” building, the mammoth concrete slab and a nearby vacant building.
Each had different owners. Locating them and convincing them to donate the properties to the agency took time.
Mansfield City Council and the county Board of Commissioners each agreed to contribute $500,000 in ARPA funds for the project.
The state agreed to kick in $3 million, an announcement Gov. Mike DeWine made at the “A” building site in April 2022.
“One of the big picture projects that we’ve taken on since I became governor is really investing in Ohioans and investing in our infrastructure. And in some places, you have an old building like this, the best way to invest in the infrastructure is for the cleanup.
“So I know this has been a priority for the county commissioners, for the mayor and for the community,” DeWine said.
“When it was new I’m sure it was a great symbol for the community and it is now time to move on.
“The city and county leaders have been chipping away on this project for a number of years, trying to complete the cleanup of this site to make way for a better future as Mansfield works to revitalize its downtown,” DeWine said.
Actual demolition work began in October 2022 when R&D Excavating from Crestline took down the nearby former Electrolux building, located on the north side of Fifth Street.
At the same time, asbestos was being removed from the former “A” building by Erie Environmental of Sandusky, a sub-contractor on the project.
Actual demolition of the “A” building began Dec. 19 and the walls were down in about two months.
The work cleaning up the “concrete jungle” continues today as R&D rips up a 30-inch concrete pad, which was found to have covered up huge concrete pits and tunnels.
The good news, according to Land Bank manager Amy Hamrick in May, is that testing being done at the site has not revealed any contamination that could require clean up.
“They’re really maybe halfway done with ripping up the concrete. Maybe a little over halfway. So we still got the other half to go,” she said in May, estimating the work could take another six months to complete.
“This has definitely been a site that has given us a lot of different little surprises,” Hamrick said.
