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Brownfields Success Stories
Lima's Liberty Commons Project is Right on Track
EPA's Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative, a program designed to empower stakeholders in their efforts to turn sites with actual or perceived contamination into productive community assets, is enabling Lima, Ohio, to recover from the aftermath of industrial closing and defense-downsizing of the past few decades. Using a $200,000 EPA grant, the Lima Brownfields Pilot has targeted four properties (abandoned industrial sites) for transformation into the 200-acre Liberty Commons Industrial Park, a business community that, when completed, will attract high-wage manufacturing.
So far, the Pilot's activities have coordinated the assessment and cleanup of a Liberty Commons parcel that has been vacant for 18 years, prompted a unique study of Lima's rail resources, and leveraged more than $1 million in funding toward a project expected to create more than 1,000 new jobs. The Ohio Rail Commission, which conducted a study of Lima's rail network, believes that once developed, the Liberty Commons project has the potential to be the largest rail site in Ohio, if not in the Midwest. The Pilot believes that the existence of these lines, which will provide a built-in transportation center for the businesses who choose to locate within Liberty Commons, will be a major asset for the project. One investor, Global Energy, Ltd., has agreed to purchase a 65-acre site within Liberty Commons that was home to the Lima Locomotive Works and plans to construct a 540-megawatt coal gasification electrical generator. As many as 1,000 local workers will be hired for the plant's construction. For more information on the Lima Brownfields Pilot, contact Gary Sheely at (419) 221-5294.