XENIA — The City of Xenia and several other municipalities in the county are in line to receive grant money to demolish buildings.
According to Greene County officials, the county is eligible for $500,00 in residential and commercial building demolition and site revitalization grant funds through the Ohio Department of Development. Applications are due by close of business on Monday, Feb. 28. After application approval and grant agreement execution, the county must allocate all grant funds by June 20, 2022, with all work completed no later than May 1, 2023.
Greene County solicited eligible project information from all local jurisdictions in order to prepare the grant application. Initially, the application was to include five residential projects and three commercial projects with overall total project costs to equal $500,000. Xenia requested $172,748 through the Ohio Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Fund for the demolition of the former Fulmer location. The county offered $122,748 in grant funding to help with this initiative with the city being asked to chip in $50,000 (a 29 percent match). The commissioners have approved the application package to be forwarded to the state.
The remaining requests are: Beavercreek (residential — $18,500); Caesarscreek Township (residential — $25,890 and $16,700); Cedarville (commercial — $183,100 with a match of $125,000); Fairborn (residential — $14,350); and Yellow Springs (commercial for Antioch — $100,000 with a match of $375,000). Total project costs are estimated at $1,050,000.
“We are submitting our applications to the state and when we hear back, we’ll go from there,” said Eric Henry, development director for Greene County. “The numbers could flex a bit, there’s a lot of variables still in play. We are fully funding all of the attached residential projects. We have requested matching funds from jurisdictions and/or property owners for the demolition of the three commercial properties which are much more expensive to demolish. We could not have distributed these funds across this many projects — in this many jurisdictions — without the high level of of community support that this program has received.”
According to Xenia Development Director Steve Brodsky, the first $500,000 of county funds does not require a match.
“And we applied for the full project cost amount,” he said. “The county would like to try to fund all of the requests so they asked other jurisdictions that applied to provide some match for their grant”
