After months of planning, crews are ready to start tearing down two Jefferson County-owned buildings on Market Street and create a green space.

Maintenance Supervisor Patrick Boyles told the county commissioners the contractor expects to begin work Friday and said it will take about six weeks to complete.

The parcels, located at 501 and 505 Market St., had been condemned and were donated to the Jefferson County Land Bank, which, in turn, transferred them to the county in exchange for the county picking up the tab for the demolition, estimated at $150,000 plus the cost of asbestos removal.

Once the buildings are down, commissioners want to turn the empty lots into a green space, a companion piece to the county-owned parking lot adjacent to it, which they also plan to make “more easily accessible and aesthetically pleasing” for county employees and visitors to the Tower building across the street.

“I’m very pleased that we will see the demolition start,” Commissioner Dave Maple said during Thursday’s meeting. “While paving won’t start this year, the entire project, when completed, will be an improvement in slum and blight, an improvement in parking for the Tower and an improvement in the green space to help downtown Steubenville.”

In August, commissioners asked Aaron Dodds, project manager for the Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District, to incorporate both spaces into the group’s application for Appalachian Community Grant funds.

At commissioners’ request, Dodds’ plans include a greenspace “that will be landscaped, potentially with a place for food trucks to do business, and landscaping with a bronze sculpture, creating a three-dimensional mural.”

Dodds has said they’re looking at several ideas for the greenspace and the sculpture, including paying homage to the Rex Cigar Store, where Dean Martin once worked, by erecting a sculpture in his likeness that would anchor a music note-shaped patio area where visitors could dine and rest. Or he said they also could highlight the Fighting McCooks, artist Thomas Cole or some of the other citizens of the county (who) made an impact on Jefferson County and Appalachian Ohio. The site would be included in the Appalachian Ohio Pollinator Trail, which will extend through the region and connect to national projects.

Boyles said they’ll lose about 29 parking stalls for the duration of the demolition, which prompted commissioners to suggest they make arrangements with a nearby property owner so employees who need to would have a place to park during that phase of the project.

Boyles said they could pickup up about 18 stalls if they open up the gravel lot until the demolition is done.

Maple, meanwhile, said the project has “been a good collaboration between the county commissioners and the land bank.”

“Much of the vision started with previous boards of commissioners and is being carried on by the current commissioners, but former commissioners (Tom) Graham and (Tom) Gentile also deserve some recognition on this overall Tower area project.”

Commissioners also addressed reports that a contractor had dumped debris from a demolition in southern Jefferson County on privately owned property in the Smithfield area, asking land bank Chairman Ray Agresta if contracts specify the landfill where they should be taken.

“It depends if (the debris) has asbestos,” Agresta replied, telling Commissioner Tony Morelli he didn’t know if the debris that was found had been “determined conclusively” to have been put there by the contractor who did that particular demolition. “They said some of the bricks looked similar.”

Morelli said he was concerned that other contractors might take the same shortcut, but Agresta told him the health department “is on it, they gave them an order to clean it up.”

Later, county Health Commissioner Andrew Henry confirmed demolition and construction waste had been found mingled with municipal waste that had been illegally dumped on the property and said earlier this month his team issued a “cease-and-desist” order and instructed him to clean up what already was there. He said the contractor in question is in the process of buying the property, but the current owner refused to sign off until the debris was properly removed.

He said the prospective buyer wasn’t happy that the current owner allowed them on site to investigate.

“Thankfully, the property wasn’t signed over and we had permission from the current property owner to inspect it,” he said, adding the contractor “won’t say he took the demo debris (from the land bank property) to Smithfield, he said it was from a demo he did elsewhere.”.

Agresta told Morelli contractors doing land bank demolitions “have to (submit) dump slips” so the state can track how much debris is landfilled. He also said that, until now, they haven’t had any problems. At its next meeting, he said the land bank board will consider removing the business from their preferred contractor list.

Commissioners also designated the land bank to serve as lead entity for the 2024-25 Building Demolition and Site Revitalization program.

Agresta said the governor made an additional $500,000 available to each county for the program, but to tap into it they must designate a lead agent. The deadline to declare lead entity and file the 2023-24 application is Monday, he said.

The Jefferson County Port Authority also received lead entity designation for brownfield remediation funding for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The Legislature approved $175 million in additional funding for the program, but is requiring commissioners in counties with fewer than 100,000 residents assign a lead entity.

“Previously, there were funds set aside for counties but you had to propose a budget,” said Robert Naylor, executive director of the port authority. “There was some legal wrangling, and they changed the parameters from ‘you need to submit projects; to ‘we want the county commissioners to designate a lead entity.'”

Maple, who was present when the authority voted to seek the designation, said he’d expressed concerns that they might be “spreading their resources too thin” but had assured its members he would support their request if they were confident serving as the brownfield lead entity wouldn’t interfere with efforts to bring jobs to Jefferson County.

He told Morelli and Commissioner Eric Timmons that the board assured him most of the nuts and bolts of remediation projects will be handled by a third party.

Naylor told commissioners the U.S. Economic Development Agency awarded the authority $400,000 in grant funding for the 2023-2025 Jefferson County Coal Recovery Initiative. The grant, which required a $100,000 local match, will be used, in part, to pay for an assistant deputy director for two years.

Maple commended the port authority for “moving ahead unilaterally to get an architect to inspect the industrial park, where commissioners hope to see a spec building constructed. The port authority also is seeking funding to construct the building from JobsOhio’s Ohio Site Inventory Program and ODOD’s Rural Industrial Park Loan Program.

“I’ve said it before, if we’re not running we at least need to be walking fast,” Maple said. “We need to get this moving. There’s a good opportunity for us to land employers – what we’ve said for the last four or five years is we don’t have inventory, so the quicker we can get moving and understand the costs, the better.”