The Muskingum County Landbank is making a move to tear down a property that’s become a blight to the community.
Through state budge appropriations each county is receiving a million dollars to take care of Brownfield properties. For everything over a million granted the county must make a 25 percent match.
At Tuesday’s Landbank meeting they decided to petition the state for the full cost of demolition of the Mosaic Tile Building. It’s estimated to cost between $1.2 to $1.5 million.
“This is the only way that we’re going to be able to move on these bigger properties like Mosaic. It’s 13.5 acres, 26 individual structures. It’s a large job and while the Landbank does have a little bit of cash it would have taken years for us to save up this amount of money,” said Executive Director of the Muskingum County Land Reutilization Corporation Andy Roberts.
Roberts said there are no definite plans as to what they’ll do with the property once the buildings are removed. The first step is to get rid of the blight.
“I can only imagine what it does to the morale of the surrounding property owners, so I think by us being able to clean this up. It’s going to hopefully transform the neighborhoods down there and give the people a little more sense of pride in their neighborhood,” said Roberts.
The county will also use part of the Brownfield money for Phase II of the Lear Property at $180,000 and asbestos remediation at the Munson School which is around $120,000.
