Depot, event center to get state funds | News, Sports, Jobs – Martins Ferry Times Leader
T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK
A century-old railroad depot on Sugar Street renovation is one project that is receiving funding through the state.
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ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The city is receiving some financial help with two major renovation projects to improve community life.
One site is the century-old railroad depot on Sugar Street, which city employees and volunteers have planned to restore for several years.
Safety and Service Director Jeremy Greenwood informed City Council of the news Monday.
He commended Recreation Director Eric Gay for spearheading the efforts to seek funding.
“Eric did an excellent job and was able to put in for money for the Capital Bill project,” Greenwood said. “We ended up getting $150,000 from the state. This is for the train depot and junior fair building renovations. We are looking for additional funding.”
The Capital Bill budget was recently passed by the Ohio General Assembly and is providing $3.5 billion for the state, with millions of dollars directed to local projects.
“It was through a Capital Bill Fund that we had worked on, and the plans are to put a new roof on the train depot and also to do some renovations to an existing building that we already have on our property at the rec department,” Gay said afterward.
“So it’s actually going to be two projects that we’re going to work on through this bill that we submitted.”
He thanked Greenwood, Greenwood’s administrative assistant Roberta Mertz, Program Supervisor Debbie Reed and Belmont County Commissioner J.P. Dutton
“This was a total team effort in trying to secure these funds,” Gay said.
The depot had gotten some attention last June, when students from Belmont College cleared out the interior, performed structural timber work on the inside of the building and took down a damaged brick chimney.
Mertz, who’s husband David Mertz is chairman of the building preservation program at the college, said more work could be scheduled in the future.
“Nothing’s been scheduled yet, but I’m optimistic,” Roberta Mertz said.
She added that the depot’s needs are very demanding.
“That train depot’s very significant,” she said. “It’s important that we replace that old slate roof with new slate. That keeps alive the possibility that the train station could be listed on a federal registry of historic places. If it’s not a new slate roof that’s put on it, we’d lose that opportunity.”
“I think the biggest issue with that is that we need to get it weather secured, hopefully with a new roof on it. That building is right next to our community garden, and I know that there’s a lot of master gardener meetings and people that are looking to have small meetings, small events, and we would love to be able to offer that place also,” Gay said.
“We just want to make it as pretty as we possibly can, to make that also an additional usable place. We feel that could be a place that could be utilized for small events that people are looking for,” he said. “It’s an additional asset that we want to take care of and just keep building the city as much as we can, and have things that people can be proud of in their town. … That’s important to us. That’s important to everybody.”
The depot could be a potential trail head for the bike trail, which terminates near the St. Clairsville-Richland City School District campus.
Gay said another major project involves a former Belmont County fair building on the recreation center’s property It has been used for storage since the fair moved to the new Belmont County Fairgrounds on Roscoe Road.
Gay said the building could be refurbished into an event center. The rec center now holds community events and activities in its gymnasium, but refurbishing the former fair building would result in a better location and expanded activities.
“It’ll be used for the birthday parties, graduations, weddings, meetings that people want to have that can be put over in that building so we have a permanent space, really so we can have two things going on at once,” he said. “Right now, with just the one existing building that we have, we have to pick and choose what we can and cannot do just because of the amount of hours that building is used. We don’t always have the room to accommodate everyone we would like to, because we already have an event scheduled.”
He said the building in question is 110 feet by 62 feet.
“It’s a great, big wonderful open space that we really feel we can take advantage of,” Gay said. “We’re running into a very good problem to have. We are outgrowing the existing building, so we are very thrilled.”
He said renovating a new event center is estimated at about $250,000. The cost of a new roof for the depot has not been estimated.
Gay doubts work on either project could begin this summer.
“This is just the first step, and it was a big first step,” he said.
Gay said it has not yet been determined how the $150,000 will be divided between the two projects.
“That’s something we will take a deeper look into as soon as we get word that we have secured those funds,” he said. “Both are equally important to us. … We’re just pleased we were able to secure the funding. … We’re not going to stop here. We’re going to keep going after additional things to try and finish as many projects as we possibly can around the city.”