MANSFIELD — Jeremy Shambaugh said Tuesday his business is there when people need help the most.
“We still do a lot of carpet cleaning and duct cleaning, but helping people after one of the worst days of their life is pretty gratifying,” the owner and CEO of Shambaugh Cleaning & Restoration said Tuesday.
Shambaugh and operations manager Bill Mellick met with the Richland County Board of Commissioners, who approved a 10-year, 50-percent property tax abatement application as part of an enterprise zone agreement for the company at 519 Home Road in Ontario.
Shambaugh, who bought the business from his father in 1999 after losing his own job, plans a 4,800-square foot addition with an investment of about $500,000.
The addition to the company’s “content division” will also create 15 to 20 more jobs in a company that now employs 35, Shambaugh said.
“We’re going to just continue to grow,” he said about the company, which now provides services in 19 Ohio counties.
Ontario City Council approved the abatement during its meeting June 6.
The business began in 1985 when Paul Shambaugh started the company’s journey off with cleaning carpet and upholstery for homeowners in Richland, Crawford, Ashland, Morrow and Knox counties.
“I was 11 years old and me and my brother were called ‘water boys,’ for quite a few years,” Jeremy Shambaugh said with a laugh.
He said he stepped away from the business for five years, armed with a business degree and a fish & wildlife degree.
“Some weird circumstances happened. My son was 2, my daughter was 1. My wife stayed home to raise the kids and I lost my job on a Friday afternoon. And I missed my first house payment.
“So I bought the business from dad in 1999. To this day, I still tell him I overpaid for it, and, and I basically morphed it into a restoration company,” Shambaugh said.
The company responds after a water/flood, fire, or mold disaster. Its employees sort through the damage and collect all the salvageable items.
“Our contents pack-out and cleaning service experts will then carefully pack your belongings and bring them to our on-site cleaning facility where they will undergo an extensive cleaning process. After your items are restored, they will be stored in our climate controlled facilities until you’re ready to have them returned,” according to the company website.
“The person (or company) that had the disaster is our client,” Mellick said. “They give us permission to talk with the insurance company to make sure that they are OK.”
Shambaugh said, “If a building catches on fire, and you turn it upside down, anything that falls out is called contents. It’s an insurance term.
“So while the house is being rebuilt or while the homeowner is displaced, we can take all their stuff out and clean it, restore it. When the house is done, we move them all back in.
“Those projects are usually long and tedious, usually a year or more. So then they need a place to put all that stuff. So we clean it and then warehouse it there at a separate location we already have out on Park Avenue,” he said.
The company recently handled the work after after a large fire at a 50,000-square foot commercial facility in Fredericktown.
Commissioners praised the company’s growth.
“I appreciate how you grew in our county and are growing and we appreciate that the investment that you’re making,” Commissioner Darrell Banks said.
