Plans to clean up Hometown Bank's South End land are underway

After Kent leaders in October decided not to rezone almost 12 acres near the center of the city, the proposed buyer backed out, but the land is still in play.

Grey Fox Capital had proposed to build a residential rental community on the property and had asked the city to rezone the acreage from Industrial to R-3 high density residential. The city’s planning commission demurred, but left open the possibility of establishing a residential overlay district that would essentially greenlight the development.

The green light soon turned to red, leaving landowner Hometown Bank to keep the for sale sign up. Now, bank board Chairman Howard Boyle said there is “some interest.” What that is, he declined to say.

Hometown Bank’s three-parcel, 17.6-acre property stretches from just west of the West Summit Street/Franklin Avenue intersection to just west of West Oak Street, wrapping around the Kent post office and bordering the upper railroad tracks.

The northernmost parcel is a popular overflow parking area for city events and Kent’s Haymaker Farmers’ Market. Included in the larger parcel to the south are what remains of the historic railroad shops built in 1865 by Marvin Kent for his Atlantic and Great Western Railroad (later the Erie Railroad).

Hometown Bank turned to the Portage County Land Reutilization Corporation (aka Land Bank), which in June received a $1,753,964 Brownfield Remediation Program grant from the state of Ohio. The grant requires a 25% local match, which Hometown Bank and city leaders in October decided to split, both paying $219,245.50.

Part of that money funded a study conducted by Brownfield Restoration Group, LLC, a company that provides Ohio EPA-certified professionals to assess and clean up properties.

The verdict? The land, or at least most of it, was indeed contaminated. That means Hometown Bank must obtain a “Covenant Not to Sue” from the Ohio EPA. It works like this:

The owner of a contaminated property—in this case, Hometown Bank—through a certified professional—in this case, Brownfield Restoration Group—must file a package of documents called a No Further Action Letter (NFA) with the Ohio EPA. Included in the packet is a review of the property’s current and historic uses, environmental problems, how they were investigated and how it was cleaned up.

When the Ohio EPA accepts the documents, it issues the covenant not to sue, which protects the property owner or operator and future owners from being legally responsible to the state of Ohio for further investigation and cleanup, as long as the property is used and maintained in the same manner as when the covenant was issued.

The grant goal is to remediate 15.3 acres that once housed a series of industrial enterprises operating in an era when land health wasn’t what it is now.

Part of Brownfield Restoration Group’s clean-up assessment involved taking core samples to see how deep the contamination goes. Residents at former formal and informal city meetings about the property stated decontaminating the property would mean removing two to 10 feet of dirt, but that is not necessarily the case.

“All of those are guesses,” Hometown Bank President and CEO Mike Lewis said. “They take core samples and that core sample says, ‘We need to remove soil this far down.’ But if they get in there and they find out that's not right, they adjust, so it could be more.”

The bank is banking on the grant and match money covering the entire cleanup. Should that not be the case, Hometown Bank would be responsible for footing the bill, “but this is not expected,” Lewis said.

Weather permitting, clean-up work will begin soon and will last about two years.