Middletown works to acquire former AK Steel property for redevelopment

Then, because this project has been contemplated to be funded within the American Rescue Plan Act budget, the city would transfer $47,250 from the ARPA fund as “revenue replacement” consistent with federal guidelines.

City Manager Jim Palenick said the port authority, established last year, has few assets and can serve as an individual authority separate from the city.

The port authority will pay William Scott, a sole practitioner and nationally-recognized legal expert whom Palenick worked with in Wisconsin, to create the legal documents necessary to make “everybody happy in the end,” he told the Journal-News after the council meeting.

Scott is trained in geology and environmental science and possesses decades of successful representation of public and private clients in transferring, remediating, and redeveloping “highly-contaminated legacy-brownfield sites,” according to a city document.

Mayor Nicole Condrey asked if Cleveland Cliffs was sharing in the cost of hiring Scott. Palenick said the city is paying the entire bill because it wants to take ownership of the property. He called the property “an orphan” and said without the city taking ownership it would remain vacant because of the cost of remediating contaminated conditions and demolishing obsolete structures.

Palenick and city staff have worked closely with Cleveland Cliffs for six to nine months and without a legal document, he said the steel company won’t transfer the property to the city because there’s the potential for “unknown, unlimited liability,” he said.

Scott will negotiate the legal terms and documentation that will protect the city and port authority while assuring Cleveland Cliffs that in relinquishing title to the property, it will not “suddenly be thrust into a position of having to incur significant costs associated with the clean-up of historic contamination,” the city said.

The city must acquire the property to move forward on its plans for a new business and research park along Ohio 4 that will include the 14 acres at the former Middletown Paperboard and 19 acres at the former CERTA site, both properties the city owns.

The city has earmarked $125,000 for demolition and remediation of the former AK Steel headquarters and $125,000 for demolition and remediation of CERTA as part of its $18.9 million ARPA budget.