DevelopOhio

The second phase of an environmental assessment at the vacant Plastech Engineered Products facility in Andover can go forward thanks to a $178,000 grant from JobsOhio to the Ashtabula County Port Authority, the Star Beacon reports.  The port authority bought the site in November 2015, and “agribusiness firm Aloterra LLC entered into a 10-year lease agreement for the building,” according to the article. Sean Ratican, the executive director of the port authority, said, “[n]obody wanted to take on the environmental liability that existed on that site”; he estimated the potential cleanup costs to be “well over $1 million.” The port authority spent “about $60,000 on more than six wells along the facility’s sewer lines, to verify environmental hazards at the site” and got approval from the state EPA after “few significant environmental concerns were found.” Ratican said the state money “allows the partners to take the first step toward bringing the building back online, and boosting industry in the area.” He said Aloterra will hire “a dozen new full-time employees within the next 18 months — in the next few years, that number is going to multiply. (New employees) are going to pay income tax, they’re going to buy homes.” For more, read the full article.