Muskingum County Land Bank Discuss Plans for New Development Sites in Zanesville
ZANESVILLE, Ohio- Three new major development sites are coming to the city of Zanesville.
The Muskingum County Land Bank held a meeting today that discussed the demolition of the old Munson school, former Mosaic Tile company and the former White Chevrolet properties.
Andy Roberts, Executive Director of Muskingum County Land Bank, said with new estimates on the old Munson school, it would be better to provide fresh housing instead of renovating the property.
“Last month we received a cost estimate. We were initially going to try to rehabilitate that structure into multi-family housing,” Roberts stated. “With the cost of construction materials and everything else going on right now, that number came back at $5.2 million, which would equate to 216,000 dollars a unit to rehab that structure. We can build new for cheaper than that so this pot of money was sitting out there to allow us to demolish from the state of Ohio. ”
Roberts said through conducted research, affordable housing was one of the biggest categories that needed to be addressed.
He talked about the convenience the property already has for building affordable housing for residents.
“Every known utility that you could ever want is already sitting in front of those lots. It doesn’t require any additional expenditure of city, county or anybody’s money to actually put the utilities on those sites,” Roberts said.
The grant application for the multi housing is still waiting for approval, but Robert said they hope to hear back about this in a few months.
The Land Bank also talked about possibly turning the Mosaic building into a greenfield and creating a park at the former White Chevrolet property where residents can gather with a view of the Y Bridge.
“We do have an active grant application on the demolition of the former Mosaic Tile property. We’re still waiting for the state to authorize. They have shown that we have expanded our set aside money so we’re hopeful that means the application has been approved,” Roberts said. “The city of Zanesville put in an application to demolish the rest of the structures at the former White Chevrolet at the corner of Pine and West Main. The board did approve that application today so we’ll be forwarding that onto the state.”
Due to some environmental contamination located at the Mosaic, the Land Bank feels the development of a residential property will not be placed for this location.
However, the main focus for the Land Bank is to continue to find companies to demolish vacant lots in the city and redevelop them into residential or environmental properties.
