Delaware County Land Bank awarded $230K in state funding to demolish three buildings

DELAWARE — The Delaware County Land Bank has received $230,000 in funding from the Ohio Department of Development to demolish three buildings.

The three buildings are:

• 1405 U.S. 23 North — formerly the Delaware County Service Center; the county still owns the building.
• 2409 State Route 750 — the future site of Bennett Farm Park, an unoccupied farm house in Powell.
• 1251 U.S. 23 North — an unoccupied house near the former service center, also owned by the county.

Land Bank President and County Commissioner Jeff Benton said the funding allows the Land Bank to spend a minimal amount of its own dollars toward the projects.

“We may put in a few thousand, but it looks like (the funding) will cover most of it,” he said.

Benton said the Land Bank submitted the three projects because they were the only ones submitted for consideration by community entities.

“We sent out a general announcements saying, ‘We’re short, we have extra money if anybody has a project to knock down.’ (Powell officials) came up with the Bennett Sheep Farm. They closed the gap,” Benton said.

Benton said the properties are going through the pre-demolition process now, which includes environmental assessments and awarding demolition contracts.

Once each property goes through the process, demolition can begin immediately following.

There are no occupants at any of the properties.

“I think we’ll probably end up developing in that whole area: the service station, the facilities building in this old house, just because it’s right next to the fairgrounds,” Benton said of the county-owned property.

Benton said the county will continue to own the land, but they’re open to listening to developers’ ideas for the plots.

“That’s ripe for development. If somebody wants to put a hotel there or some other project related to the fairgrounds, we would definitely listen,” he said.

Land Bank could soon fund more county demolitions

Benton said he plans to propose the Land Bank runs its own county demolition program that mirrors the state’s program. The board will discuss the program at its July 27 meeting.

“What we’re going to do is hopefully— the board has to approve— a quarterly program that funds local demolitions in Delaware County directly,” he said.

“The Land Bank has 300,000 or so in revenue in cash, and they’d get about $80,000 a year in revenue. You can knock a building down for $30,000-50,000, so we could fund two, three, four a year.”

Benton already has a project in mind for the program. Mill on Flax, the apartment complex located off East Central Avenue, plans to add more buildings — but needs to demolish three buildings in order to do so.

“One of the things I’m proposing is we use this money to assist them and knock these building down so their project can proceed,” he said.

He encouraged any entity wanting to demolish a building to contact the Land Bank for assistance.