SEBRING, Ohio (WKBN) – A rundown manufacturing site in Sebring is closer to getting a facelift.Located off West Georgia Avenue, the building was associated with many companies, including Limoges China.“You have a building here that has been associated with pottery making and other manufacturing going on a century of activity here,” Mahoning County Land Bank executive director Debora Flora said. “But in recent decades, it had been idle, and it was collapsing in some sections, and it was dangerous for the ...
SEBRING, Ohio (WKBN) – A rundown manufacturing site in Sebring is closer to getting a facelift.
Located off West Georgia Avenue, the building was associated with many companies, including Limoges China.
“You have a building here that has been associated with pottery making and other manufacturing going on a century of activity here,” Mahoning County Land Bank executive director Debora Flora said. “But in recent decades, it had been idle, and it was collapsing in some sections, and it was dangerous for the area. And the village leaders here wanted to see something new develop in the land would be useful for that.”
The Village of Sebring, in collaboration with Mahoning County Land Bank, the commissioners, and the Ohio Department of Development, tore down the building due to the vacancy and danger it posed.
“We have to demonstrate collaboration if we want to find the money, the grants, to take care of these problems and to come in behind them with opportunities,” Flora added. “So to anybody who doesn’t believe that collaboration matters, I’m here to say it matters, and it matters now in the grant applications themselves.”
The Village of Sebring got a global agreement with the former owner to tear the building down in 2022.
“The funding, of course, popped up earlier this year,” Sebring mayor David Wright said. “So we started the process, just closed on it in July, and then they started the teardown within a couple of weeks.”
The project costs approximately $640,000, with about 105,000 coming from the county commissioners.
“We were able to do it from the ARPA funds that [we] received years ago, and it was repurposed money to do this project, and it’s cleaning up this parcel and they’re going to it’s going to even make it even more productive of a piece of property for people to come out here and put a business in,” Mahoning County comissioner Anthony Traficanti said. “So we’re very proud to be part of that.”
“I do want people to come to Mahoning County when it happens, and it’s happening, to see shiny new buildings and quit calling us the Rust Belt,” Mahoning County commissioner Gen DiFabio added. “We’re knocking the rust off the Rust Belt, and we’re growing, and we’re getting better. And it’s happening.”