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"Columbiana Port Authority Acts on Wellsville Park, Fiber Optics System, to Save Jobs"
" EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio -- The Columbiana County Port Authority authorized taking out bridge loans of $717,000 and $250,000 Monday night. The former would advance relocating railroad tracks that serve the Wellsville Intermodal Industrial Park. The latter would advance a fiber-optics system to serve the businesses in the county and the public schools in Columbiana and Mahoning counties. The authority also authorized its chairman, Russell Albright, or vice chairman, Carl Pelini, to bid up to $550,000 at the sheriff's sale for the Sterling China Co. dinnerware manufacturing facility in Wellsville and then lease it back to David M. Bruno and Sterling China USA LLC. Sterling China USA is a subsidiary of Castle Wells Management Inc., incorporated in Nevada. Date of the sheriff's sale has not been set, the authority's chief executive officer, Tracy Drake, said. He does not expect any other bids. National City Bank, Youngstown, would received the proceeds. Should Sterling China USA succeed in its efforts, the plant would save 97 jobs and add 30 new ones over the next three years, Bruno has told the authority and the Ohio Department of Development. Development will provide a grant of $200,000 toward the $550,000 bid, Sterling USA's memorandum of understanding with the port authority says. On the $250,000 bridge loan -- it has a one-year term and would be issued by Sky Bank -- the authority would pay that sum to Facilities Based Communications, Cleveland, for 12 fiber-optic strands, 10 of which will be part of a Sonet ring assigned to the schools, the other two for commerce. "These two strands will take Columbiana County out of the Dark Ages," Drake told his board. "I'd like to say we'll be as well wired as Silicon Valley -- that's an exaggeration, but it's not too far off." The chairman of the authority's finance committee, Steve Cooper, observed that two of the oldest means of communication, railroads and water, would finally be joined with the most technologically advanced. With the authority buying the fiber-optic lines, Facilities Based Communications, with offices in World Tarde Park, Leetonia, would in turn lease two lines that it would lease to third parties. In the relocation of the railroad tracks, the Norfolk Southern Railroad decided it wanted to be paid up-front for the work that begins this summer. (It should be completed by year-end.) Hence the need for the bridge loan through National City Bank, Drake explained. Total cost of the relocation is $826,000 and once the work is complete, the Ohio Rail Development Commission will release the $717,000 it has committed to the port authority, Drake said. Relocation of the tracks from the river bank "will gain us four acres of riverfront," the authority CEO told his board. Those four acres eventually will be covered with concrete and used to store containers brought up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers for transfer by truck and rail. Congress should pass the $5 million line item in the federal budget, inserted by U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D 6th Ohio, that will pay for much of the improvements in the Wellsville intermodal facility, Drake said. He was in Washington last week and accompanied Strickland as he lobbied for the line item before the House Transportation Committee. Still incomplete is the new dock system that will serve barges carrying containers up the Ohio, Drake said. The U.S. Maritime Administration is proposing taking 1% of all duties the customs service collects and earmarking them for improvements in the inland port system, the authority CEO told his board. With the financing the authority has received from the state and Congress, he reported, "We're out ahead, we're ahead of the game." "