News Summary

HAMILTON — A little cooperation with the state has earned the city access to $1 million for redevelopment projects.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week it awarded two $1 million grants to the Ohio Department of Development to establish revolving loan funds. These funds can be used to provide loans and grants for cleanup activities at sites in the state contaminated with petroleum and hazardous substances.

ODOD asked Hamilton in December to be a partner in applying for the grants based on the city's past success with redeveloping brownfield properties — sites with hazardous substance contamination.

"(Hamilton) has continued to look for opportunities to take old industrial sites and turn them over for the benefit of the whole," ODOD Deputy Director of Urban Development John Magill said.

In exchange for the partnership, ODOD has earmarked the hazardous substance cleanup money exclusively for Hamilton. The city has about one year to make an application for the funds, Economic Development Specialist Melissa Johnson-Gabbard said.

The money could be used for acquisition, demolition or clean up of a qualifying property.

The city is currently redeveloping the abandoned Hamilton Die Cast metal working plant on East Avenue into a storage warehouse for Matandy Steel.

It received a $750,000 Clean Ohio Assistance grant in October to fund the project, and may have to finance about $477,000 for a local match.

Johnson-Gabbard said the city may apply for a loan from ODOD's recent grant to pay the match on the Die Cast project.

"That would be the most ready and most obvious choice at this point," she said. "But there are certainly other properties in the city we would love to see move into a higher and better use."

The interest and payment requirements on the loan would have to be negotiated, but rates would be very low and based on distressed community criteria, Johnson-Gabbard said.

The $1-million grant for petroleum remediation will allow ODOD to collaborate with the Ohio Department of Commerce in the clean up of former gas stations across the state.