Monday, March 19, 2012NORTH LIMA, Ohio -- When Michelle Au graduated from South Range High School in 1987, she rejoiced that never again would she have to spend a day in that building.
Until 24 years later when she took a call from her brother, John Monroe, informing her he was at an auction.
“I thought, ‘Auction? That doesn’t seem so bad,’ ” Au said. “Then he told me he bought our old school. And guess who he wanted to run it?”
That’s how Au became the building manager at the North Lima Business Complex -- the former South Range High School on South Avenue Extension -- where she oversees 20 small businesses including her own, A Crafting Affaire, and 53 vendor crafts in the old cafeteria.
Monroe split the costs of buying the building and the former middle school on South Range Road in Greenford with Ed Schaefer, a nearby farmer who also attended the South Range schools.
“We’re trying to create jobs and help the economy out,” Monroe said. “We’re just trying to put this area back on the map.”
To date, the project is far from turning a profit for the co-owners. It has succeeded, however, as a philanthropic effort that kept two usable buildings from being razed after the South Range schools moved into a new building by providing space for small-business owners to develop their brands at rents they can afford.
When he toured the complex March 15, U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-6 Ohio, commended Monroe and Schaefer for helping the small businesses. “About 60% of America’s jobs are created by small businesses and that’s the backbone of our economy,” Johnson remarked. “Trust me, it’s the small-business owners that are going to get our economy going again.”
The most pressing problem the business complex faces is zoning. The Beaver Township Zoning Board doesn’t “know how to define us,” Au said.
When the building was a school, it was zoned as such with the appropriate regulations. Today the building contains a hodgepodge of businesses that range from a commercial kitchen that bakers and cooks can rent to a technical assistance company. Each needs its own set of rules and standards as they coexist under the same roof.
One problem the complex ran into early on was a pet-grooming business operating down the hall from a business that sold food. The problem was resolved but more zoning issues pop up as more businesses join the complex.
The latest issue was parking for the handicapped. The existing spaces were fine for a school, but every Sunday a church conducts services in the auditorium. The new Egli’s Discount Market opens, March 24 with the closest entrance to that venture in the rear of the building where no parking spaces for the handicapped have been set out.
Au called the experience “a learning process” for herself, the business owners and the township.
The former middle school building in Greenford, since renamed the Greenford Bobcats Space Center, has fewer businesses -- and fewer issues as well.
In January, Matt Baird used the gymnasium at the space center to open his second barbeque restaurant, the Smokehouse, availing himself of as much of the kitchen equipment and furniture there.
Former students would not recognize everything upon their return; a new hardwood floor and a wooden serving bar give the former school a rustic look.
“We get a lot of people that came to school here and they’re glad it’s being used,” said Jeff Schreiber, manager at The Smokehouse.
Since the restaurant opened, business has stayed steady with families and groups of people coming in for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Schreiber said.
“Business has been much better than we expected,” he related. “We opened without any advertising; through word of mouth and people knowing the restaurant was coming, business has been very good.”
The space center also houses Green Harvest Energy, Buckeye Mineral, an office for the Associated Land Owners of the Ohio Valley, and the Small Wonders Discovery and Learning Center, a preschool Schreiber’s wife, Leslie, started.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.