A local business is receiving a $1 million grant to remediate a former brownfield in Cedarville.
The 24-acre property at 154 W. Xenia Ave. is an abandoned strawboard mill built in the late 1800s. Decades of manufacturing impacted the soil, groundwater and site structures.
“It has continued to deteriorate. The brick wall is collapsing and falling in, and that end of the building just really wasn't kept up at all, so it's been quite an eyesore for the residents and visitors to Cedarville,” Cedarville village administrator James Kannedy said.
Within the last couple of years, Xenia-based Reddy Electric Company purchased the site.
The grant the company received from the Ohio Department of Development will allow the business to complete asbestos abatement, hazardous waste removal, three building demolitions, and impacted soil excavation. The company is also planning installations of vapor mitigation systems where needed.
The company will build a new corporate office and warehouse there.
Kannedy said the company will bring new jobs to the community.
“Without having industry here now, bringing something like Reddy Electric to Cedarville is a blessing,” he said.
Through the grant, the Department of Development said the company will retain 150 jobs and scale to add 250 more.
Kannedy said that would make the company one of the top three employers in the village.
Kannedy said the company is nearing completion of the first phase of construction, and the new buildings should be move-in ready by this summer.
This project was one of 84 cleanup and remediation projects awarded in this round of Ohio Brownfield Remediation Program grants.
“Sites like these do no good when they’re left alone to contaminate the soil and impact the health of our neighborhoods,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in a news release from the Department of Development.
“Throughout the past five years, we’ve changed the trajectory of hundreds of properties that once held our communities back, turning long-neglected eyesores into places of possibility," he said.
