Source: http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com, June 3, 2016
By: Linda Martz
An abandoned AP gas station at 128 Lexington Ave. that resulted in multiple complaints to Mansfield’s codes department over the past eight years finally will be torn down.
Mayor Tim Theaker announced Friday that the city has been awarded an Ohio Development Services Agency grant of up to $100,000 that will allow the city to start the demolition process and take care of environmental remediation at the gas station at 128 Lexington Ave.
Once the State Controlling Board meets June 6, giving final approval for the grant, the city can initiate the process for demolition and remediation of any contamination, city officials said.
Mansfield was one of seven Ohio cities that applied for one of the competitive grants in the first round of funding under state’s new Abandoned Gas Stations program.
Penny Martin, public information officer for the state agency, said Mansfield’s grant is meant to cover costs of removing two underground storage tanks (one originally used for kerosene), back-filling the tank area and demolishing the building that still stands at the site.
“The goal is to provide the community with funding to assess sites and clean up sites that have underground storage tanks with documented petroleum releases,” she said.
The Ohio Development Services Agency worked closely with the State Fire Marshal’s Office, which oversees underground storage tank issues, and the Ohio EPA to develop a program to clean up abandoned gas station sites.
“We are enthusiastic about this program. We think it’s really going to help local communities to create properties that there will be new development on,” Martin said.
“There are a lot of these (abandoned stations) around the state,” she said.
Mansfield applied for and received the maximum funding amount of up to $100,000, Martin said. “If for some reason the project goes over that amount, they can come back and apply for additional funding,” she added.
Economic Development Director Tim Bowersock said the $100,000 would be used in conjunction with another $35,000 to complete the project. Bowersock could not be reached for additional comment Friday afternoon.
Theaker said the city worked to reclassify the former AP gas station in order to be eligible for outside help on a cleanup.
‘With the assistance of McCabe Engineering, the city applied to the state for, and was successfully in the reclassification of the abandoned AP gas station (the old Clark station) on Lexington Avenue,” he said. With this new classification, the city was able to and did apply to the state for funding from the Hazardous Cleanup Fund,” the mayor said
Over the past several years, the city has demolished more than 500 blighted homes and worked on repairs to other eyesores, Theaker said.
More than two dozen former gas stations have been shut down in Richland County over the past two decades.
The Lexington Avenue station was among the more problematic deteriorating properties city officials have had to deal with in recent years.
It was one of a number of gas stations around Ohio that are owned by Millennium Property Holdings LLC of Romulus, Mich., which let the building sit empty.
Millennium in December 2006 purchased two Richland County A&P gas stations, at 128 Lexington Ave. and 1261 W. Fourth St.
Over the next several years, city inspectors issued a series of codes violations notices on the Lexington Avenue station, warning Millennium to secure the building, remove junk and debris and remove old signs.
In late 2008, out of concerns for public safety, the city arranged to have a metal canopy over the Lexington Avenue gas station torn down, after it began collapsing.
The property went for sheriff’s sale at least twice in 2014, but failed to attract purchasers.
Other locations that will receive abandoned gas stations grants in the first round of funding for the state program are the Ashtabula County Port Authority (Austinburg), city of Sandusky, village of Syracuse, city of Toledo, Adams County board of commissioners (for a property in Manchester) and city of Bexley.