Highland County land bank board updated on grant progress

Members of the Highland County Land Reutilization Corporation (land bank) board heard updates on state grant progress and other properties during a meeting Thursday, June 18, in a return to regular business.

The meeting was their first regular meeting since April, after land bank administrator Jason Johansen resigned in May, then was subsequently rehired as a contractor for the HCLRC in special and emergency meetings.

Since then, the state announced in May that Highland County has been awarded 2026 Brownfield Remediation Grant funding for assessment activities at former gas stations on state Route 73 in Belfast ($164,700), East Main Street in Hillsboro ($222,666), South Washington Street in Greenfield ($117,128) and Spruance Road in Marshall Township ($150,452). 

Johansen said that they may be running into an issue getting access to the East Main Street property now, as the property owner indicated he had changed his mind about participating in the program.

“You should get grant agreements any day for the four gas stations,” Johansen told the board. “For the East Main gas station, we are needing a new access agreement signed. The previous one is expired. Emails and calls had gone unanswered until yesterday. We finally got ahold of the owner. That conversation did not go as well as what we would have liked it to. It kind of ended with an abrupt hangup.”

Johansen said they are otherwise “ready to go, but if he doesn't want to, then we'll just get with the state, and we'll try to find another project or two to fill that.”

“It’s out of our hands,” board president Terry Britton said.

Counting the two other applications that have not yet been awarded — for a former machine shop/filling station on East Jefferson Street and for the remainder of the former Elliott Hotel on South Washington Street, both in Greenfield — Johansen said the land bank has “utilized $998,676 of the $1 million set aside for Highland County.” The board approved the two Greenfield applications at their last regular meeting in April.

Britton said he had “been hearing a little bit of pushback from” people in Greenfield and asked Johansen if “the mayor and everybody is on board with this” grant, particularly for the Elliott Hotel.

“The mayor definitely is,” Johansen said. “That’s been my main means of communication, with him.”

Britton also asked about the demolition of the former hotel property, and Johansen reiterated that the land bank is applying for an assessment grant, “to do the asbestos testing and the environmental work.”

Johansen said they are still working to finalize work at the Rocky Fork Truck Stop, which was funded in the previous two Brownfield grant cycles, following months of well test sampling and injections.
 
“Groundwater sampling of the monitoring wells was delayed due to heavy rain and now scheduled for June 30 and July 1,” Johansen said. “We are crossing our fingers that the last round of injections at the end of March took the numbers below action levels, so we can receive the no further action letter from the EPA.”

Johansen also provided an update on the projects being cleaned up through both the 2024-25 and the 2025 iterations of the state’s Building Demolition & Site Revitalization Grant Program.

For the 19 projects using leftover 2024-25 grant funding, Johansen said that as of last Thursday, 13 projects are done. Assuming the remaining six parcels stay within the current bid specifications, Johansen said the land bank will still have another $36,421.64 left to spend from that grant cycle.  

“I'll go ahead and start those conversations with the state to see when we can start submitting those replacement projects,” Johansen said. “Right now, they have an end date of December 31. If they allow us to go ahead and submit those, we could possibly get them done this fall, before then. If not, then we'll have to have another extension, but I don't know if they're going to grant any more extensions on those, so we'll start getting the ball rolling on that.”

The land bank was awarded $230,000 in April for the new grant cycle, with the six projects and administration costs totaling $37,161.30 for a remaining balance of $192,838.70. In April, the board also granted a motion to apply for 18 additional properties, as those projects have not yet been awarded, according to Johansen.

Johansen added that of those 18 projects, “three have been removed from the program,” including one on Hazel Street in Hillsboro, one on Maple Street in Mowrystown and one on North Fourth Street in Greenfield. Johansen said both the Hazel Street and North Fourth Street properties are on the “replacement list” for possible resubmission, as their removal was due to access/transfer issues, while the Maple Street property was deemed ineligible.

“It's a barn-like structure, and it's not taxed as a main dwelling on the property,” he said.

Johansen added that the 429 North Fourth Street property, which the land bank is acquiring as a forfeited land to the state of Ohio, will be “a hot demo.

“The asbestos inspection says that it's going to be a hot demo. It's too dangerous to abate prior to demolition,” Johansen said. “At the last meeting, I said it was going to be roughly a $5,000-$8,000 demo. It's hard telling what exactly that entails, how much needs to go. Usually it's the whole house, but it depends on the abatement contractor, if they feel as if they can take certain sections of it. Whatever pleases the EPA, is kind of what they do. 

“That price will probably be anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 for that demo.”

Along with the Hazel Street and North Fourth Street properties, there are six other properties on the list for potential replacement/additional applications, all of which have Hillsboro addresses.

In other discussion: 

• After months of debate by land bank board members regarding options for selling the property, Johansen said that 222 McClain Avenue in Greenfield would be up for sale at a public auction June 20. 

“There is a minimum reserve on our property of $10,000,” Johansen said. “Community Action did reach out last week. They got the Welcome Home Ohio grant, and so they're interested in this property.

“I told them when the sale was, if they would be interested in going there and purchasing it from there, but if it does not sell, either to them or to anyone else, I think that would be our best avenue to go with that.”

Johansen said that Community Action is also interested in 11410 Cathy’s Court, which is owned by the land bank and currently being cleaned up through the 2024-25 Building Demolition & Site Revitalization Grant Program.

“The adjacent neighbors have had a ton of interest in that property, but I just don't think they're anywhere near what our listing price would be for that,” Johansen said. “We had been seeking donation on that property for the better part of a year, and we ultimately ended up paying the prosecutor's office $1,541.43 to do an expedited tax foreclosure.

“Within that foreclosure, $38,553.11 in delinquent property taxes were wiped in the tax card. The land bank has $3,386 in a grant-funded demolition, and we also paid $250 back in September of 2023 for a title search — that was when we were trying to go the donation route — and we ended up finding a $166,000 mortgage lien.”

Johansen added that this is a 1.5-acre parcel “equipped with water and sewer, on a dead end street at the lake,” and similar, but smaller, lots in the area with utilities are currently listed for $40,000 to $70,000.

“We’ve got a good piece of property there that has just been totally cleared,” Johansen said. “The neighbor was pretty concerned about leaving privacy, and so we left about a 15-foot strip of trees, just to give that that good separation of property. 

“I don't know where we'd be at pricing, but Community Action is interested in that as well.”

Board member Lauren Walker said she “would like to know what their plan is” for the Welcome Home grant funding before making any decisions on Community Action.

Johansen also discussed a “very small” .05-acre parcel on North West Street, which he said has been forfeited to the state after tax foreclosure and two failed attempts at sheriff’s sales. 

“It is no doubt a side lot, and although the city of Hillsboro owns the adjacent property, they did sell it about a year or so ago,” Johansen said. “It’s not in their name yet, so they’re not considered an adjacent neighbor yet, but they're going to put it into their name now.

“We can acquire it from the forfeited land list, and then we can sell it as a side lot, kind of similar what we did over on Bigelow Street where we acquired a forfeited land, very small, and we sold it to the adjacent neighbor, who added it into his property.”

Walker said the adjacent property owner is interested in the parcel. She also commented that the land bank “should probably act on” these properties before they make it to the state’s forfeited land list in the future. 

“Expedited foreclosures come directly to us,” Johansen said. “Traditional foreclosures that don't sell it at a sheriff sale, they should just go to the land bank, but they don’t. They go to the state of Ohio, and then we can go and acquire it off the forfeited land.”

The board agreed to acquire the parcel and work toward selling it to the adjacent property owner.

• The board approved the financial reports as presented by Johansen for both April and May. The HCLRC began April with a balance of $322,777.24 and ended May with $394,672.49. It was also noted that a fraud dispute with the bank “has been resolved,” Johansen said, with their account credited for the unauthorized charge.

In a separate motion, the board also authorized the payment of outstanding bills, including for legal fees; work from contractors, including for mowing, asbestos abatement and grant-funded demolitions and brownfield work; salary and expenses; rent; and auditor fees. 

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