Port Authority Talks Redeveloping Ohio 4 Site

JournalNews :: 2.2.05 — A day after getting their first round of funding, members of the Butler County Port Authority discussed the merits of a possible first project — a brownfield redevelopment here.

The city of Middletown contributed $10,000 toward the authority’s $30,000 preliminary budget this week. Authority Secretary John Fonner said he expects Hamilton and Butler County to follow up with an additional $20,000 shortly.

Although the contribution does not give the group much capital to work with, the authority heard a presentation from Butler County United Way President Maureen Noe about plans to convert the old Western States property on Ohio 4 into a community resource center — a multi-tenant campus for local social service agencies.

Noe said United Way’s goal is to buy the property and to provide low-cost lease space to the agencies. The project is expected to cost about $6 million.

“(Lease expenses) take up the dollars that you are raising every year,” she told the board. “If we can put more of those dollars into direct service, that’s a good thing for the community.”

Fonner said if the authority decides to get involved, it would likely be through ownership of the buildings.

“If we did it, we would probably — because these are social service agencies — we would own it without a profit,” he said. “But the flip side of that is, if we owned it, we would need to own it without risk. The leases would have to be strong enough, or the financial backing of the project would need to be strong enough to support it.”

The agencies may be able to get low-cost financing by using the authority, he said, but the financing would have to be supported somehow by the agencies themselves.

Authority members John Gillespie and Vice Chairman Joe Magdich questioned whether a deal couldn’t be struck as effectively directly with private lenders. Chairman Richard Slagle said he did not believe the authority should get into the landlord business.

Middletown City Councilman Perry Thatcher, at the meeting as a visitor, questioned whether the center would draw agencies to Hamilton and away from his city. Thatcher said the authority should encourage economic development that benefits the entire county and not in one city to the detriment of others.

Fonner countered that by its nature, the authority would sometimes take on projects that would only directly benefit a very small part of the county. At the same time, Fonner said, he did not believe the authority should encourage the movement of business from one part of the county to the other.

He said the authority should encourage businesses to stay in their current locations. When that’s not practical — or when a corporate decision has been made to move — the authority should do what it can to keep that business nearby.