Globex to Prepare Specs for Wellsville Excavator Crane
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio -- If all goes as planned, cells C or G on the Ohio River in Wellsville Intermodal Facility will have at least a conveyor system in place by the end of construction season and could well have an excavator crane as well.
The board of the Columbiana County Port Authority agreed to contract with the Canfield office of Globex Corp., an engineering and consulting firm, to draw up the bidding specifications for the conveyor system and crane by July. The contract would be awarded in August and the work would be completed late this year.
Globex will be paid $35,000 for its work and the project would cost somewhere between $3 million and $4 million, port authority CEO Tracy Drake estimated.
The port authority has $3.2 million budgeted for the projects, has received $2.6 million in grants to fund the work and expects to receive another $1.2 million, Drake informed his board Monday night.
Depending on how the bids come in, the work could be completed this year. If the lowest and best bid comes in above $3.2 million, work on the crane, which would be built on a captive barge moored to cell C or G at the port, would be deferred to the next fiscal year.
The crane would be capable of transloading bulk materials from the barges that dock at the Intermodal industrial park to the conveyor system. It would supplement the 60-ton overhead crane in place and be capable of reaching barges the overhead crane cannot.
The board also approved a lease with Pennex Aluminum Co., which is expanding its operations to 270,000 square feet in World Trade Park just outside Leetonia. The lease begins June 15 and runs month-to-month in the now-vacant operations building the port authority owns. Pennex will pay the authority $2,810 a month in rent for 5,125 square feet, 3,215 feet of office space and 2,000 feet of support space.
Pennex does not expect to remain in the space more than a year and the port authority is trying to sell the building. Hence the authority agreed to give Pennex three month’s notice to vacate should it find a buyer before March 15, 2015.
The board endorsed the city of East Liverpool’s application for a $25,000 Local Government Innovation Fund Grant the city wants as part of its downtown revitalization efforts. East Liverpool would use the grant to pay consultants to recruit companies, possibly a trade school and hotel, in the downtown, Drake said after the meeting.
East Liverpool is working with the East Liverpool Community Improvement Corp. and Southern Columbiana County Regional Chamber of Commerce on a joint strategic economic development plan.
The port authority board earlier endorsed a similar effort by Wellsville.
The board agreed to lease an additional 1,000 square feet of space in the Ferro Building on Harvey Avenue to Employment Development Inc., a sheltered workshop, bringing the space it rents from the port authority to 7,500 feet and monthly rent to $7,875.
The sheltered workshop did not realize how much space it would need when it signed the first lease earlier this year, Drake informed his board. Hence the urgency to amend the lease.
And the board entered into a $10 million bond resolution with the Stark County Port Authority, assigning its capacity to issue tax-exempt bonds to its counterpart based in Canton.
Ohio allows port authorities to issue up to $10 million in tax-exempt bonds a year. The Columbiana County authority had never used its capacity, Drake said, and the Stark County authority had exhausted its capacity this year.
The Canton Christian Home, represented at last night’s meeting by its director of administration and finance, Tom Strobel, laid out how the funds generated would be spent. (Strobel was accompanied by bond counsel and the CEO of the Stark County Port Authority.)
The Canton Christian Home employs 200 and cares for 235 residents in independent living, assisted living and those in its skilled nursing section paid for by Medicare or Medicaid, Strobel said. The funds from the sale of bonds would build 15 more apartments, “about a half wing,” as he put it, and provide employment for another 50 people when it’s completed.
The Canton Christian Home, founded about 35 years ago, does not transfer its residents elsewhere when their savings are exhausted or outlive their savings, Strobel noted, and provides $400,000 a year in rent subsidies.
Besides the $10 million bond capacity the Columbiana County Port Authority assigned to the Stark County authority, it committed to another $4.1 million of its 2015 tax-exempt bond authority in support of the home.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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