MANSFIELD — The Richland County Land Bank has received a $120,700 state grant it will use in what it hopes will be the final step needed for potential redevelopment of Swan Cleaners.
The money will be used to remediate any contaminated groundwater found near the former cleaners at 165 Park Ave. West.
The store, which housed dry cleaning and laundry services since 1946, closed in 2014 and was acquired by the Land Bank in January 2019.
“This should be our last step for this project, to get it done and be ready to move on with getting it redeveloped,” Land Bank Executive Director Amy Hamrick said.
In June of 2019, the Land Bank was awarded a $411,000 clean up grant through the U.S. EPA. The funds were used to rid the property of asbestos, contaminated soil and install a depressurization or vapor mitigation system.
Hamrick said at the time it was crucial to make the site usable given its location in what is now known as the Imagination District.
“With the work being done by the Renaissance Theatre and Little Buckeye Children’s Museum, leaving a blighted building could only bring it all down (aesthetically),” Hamrick said in 2019.
An environmental assessment of the building’s interior air and soils beneath the building found widespread contamination of chemicals.
Much of the site has been successfully cleaned up and mitigated, including air quality at the site. But Hamrick said in April that water tables at the site have risen and tests have revealed “some contamination” in ground water in the area.
The Land Bank board in April 2024 voted to allow Mannik and Smith Group from Toledo to install three 50-foot deep monitoring wells near the site.
Matthew Pesci, a senior environmental project manager at Mannik and Smith, said monitoring wells needed to be done to determine the groundwater flow direction.
“Right now we only have two points on Swan Cleaners and we need at least three to be able to get a direction of flow,” he said in April.
Hamrick asked Pesci during the Land Bank meeting in April to identify possible outcomes of the monitoring wells.
He said, “Either we find more (contaminants) or we don’t. Hopefully, we can identify which way it’s going and what those impacts are to help determine what we need to do to address them.
“The good news is right now the building is usable. The remediation system that was installed is operating like it’s supposed to and there’s no indoor air issue. In all reality, the water isn’t posing an issue because nobody’s drinking it,” Pesci said.
Hamrick said the work to install the well falls under a state assessment grant, other than the board’s required 25-percent match.
“We are approaching the property owners shown in the map in hope of gaining access to install the monitoring wells. The locations may change,” Hamrick said.
She said Mannik Smith hoped to have the wells installed before winter.
The funds were part of $52 million announced Tuesday by Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik in support for brownfield remediation and building demolition projects across the state.
The Ohio Brownfield Remediation grants announced total more than $29 million to clean up and redevelop 36 hazardous brownfield sites in 23 counties, including nearly $10 million in funding for the remediation and redevelopment of the former Terrace Plaza Hotel, a historically significant part of Cincinnati’s Central Business District.
Once remediated, the building will be redeveloped into residential apartments, retail spaces, restaurants, and a public parking garage.
Since the launch of the Ohio Brownfield Remediation Program, the Department of Development has awarded more than $490 million to support 462 projects in 84 counties.
The Ohio Demolition and Site Revitalization grants announced today total $23.3 million to demolish 292 vacant, dilapidated buildings in nine counties, including the demolition of a former student housing facility on Capital University’s campus in Bexley.
Since the launch of the Ohio Demolition and Site Revitalization Program, more than $270 million in grants has been awarded to support more than 5,000 demolition projects in every county in the state.
