Barry Fortune, Correspondent
With city council’s support, Ashland Mayor Matt Miller may have just found a solution for the Hess & Clark building, which closed its doors in 2003. Council approved the plan at an emergency meeting Wednesday morning.
The building will be torn down with plans for a new data center to eventually be built.
“That building has been deteriorating in the middle of our city for nearly two decades,” said Miller. “The building, after some grand plans from a few individuals, has gone into tax delinquency.”
Miller began establishing communications with the former owner in 2018 to simply give the property to the city.
“I did that so we could move forward with removing the structure,” said Miller. “After all, the structure is terribly unsafe. Some of the roof has collapsed and some of the floors are rotting through. The building is a public safety hazard.”
About a month ago, Miller began working with a developer whose company is based in California, but who himself lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“What this developer does is acquire property like the Hess & Clark building, tear it down to the concrete slab, then proceed to construct a data center on the location,” explained Miller. “So we began to talk to him about this property.”
Data centers are centralized locations where computing and networking equipment is concentrated for collecting, storing, processing and then distributing large amounts of data. Data center construction has grown to a $68.7 billion global market as the need for safe and secure distribution has increased.
After approximately a month of negotiating, the developer agreed to purchase the property for $100.
“From the city’s perspective, this is an unbelievable situation,” Miller said. “Not only are we going to see that building be removed and that public safety hazard being removed, but we are going to see the site re-developed. We are in the early stages, but that is the plan right now.”
The money saved by the city in not hiring a company to remove the building is another big win for the project.
“Over the past few years I have collected estimates for what it would cost the city to remove Hess & Clark,” said Miller. “And we were seeing estimates up to $1.4 million. We agreed to help with some of the additional expenses, but let me tell you, it is not a fraction of what we would have had to pay.”
“This is a wonderful thing,” said Ward 3 Councilman Dennis Miller. “We were looking at not just an eyesore, but a safety hazard as well. We were looking at estimates of over a million dollars just to tear it down and that would not have put anything on the place. This company likes to have sites that are already zoned properly and have all the utilities they need. It is just a God-send to the city. We could not have asked for a better scenario.”
Miller added that a city stipulation made is that they will sell the property for $100, but they will not turn ownership over of the property to the developer until the building is down to the city’s satisfaction.
“The reason we did that is we don’t want them to start tearing it down and then just walk away,” said Miller. “And then we spend the next five years trying to wrestle ownership just so we can deal with the property again. He did say he had never done a deal like that before, but he completely understood.”
The developer is Abacus Industrial Development and the company will bring in its own demo team from Pennsylvania. Expectations were to have an asbestos survey crew on the site last Friday and to have heavy equipment onsite by this Friday.
“They want to begin the demolition as soon as possible,” said Miller. “Their purchase agreement is to have the building down in four to six months, but they expect to have it done in much less time. In fact it could be done in as few as 16 weeks depending on the weather.”
After tearing the building down to the concrete slab the new structure will be put up. The building sits on 2.6 acres of land.
According to Miller, the data center site will be running 24/7, 365 days of the week and could have six to 10 full-time employees at the center.
“It is not a big-time job creator,” said Miller, “but we do get the site cleaned up and get it back on the tax rolls because there will now be a business on that location and even the 10 jobs adds additional income tax for the city. And we have another good looking building.”
Miller talked about the importance of protecting and preserving some of the building’s history.
“We talked to the crew about salvaging the cornerstones of the building for the historical society,” he said. “And to also possibly save the fireplace that would have at one time been Mr. Clark’s office.”
Miller said that 7th Street will be closed during the demolition, but be reopened when the project is complete. As of now there is no time frame for the construction of the new data center, but will be further discussed when the site is cleaned up.
“If all goes as planned, we will get that building down, get the site re-developed and to be able to avoid another big cleanup bill like we had with the Pump House,” said Miller.
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