At our August 22, 2023 Trustee Meeting, our board voted 2-1 (I was the NO vote) to authorize and fund up to $2,500,000 from our General Fund for our agent to
participate in the auction to attempt to buy the Sears owned portion of the Northgate Mall property. The Sears store property is the rear +/- 12 acres
which included the 175,000 sf Sears building, which is brick and mortar attached to the outside owners of the other parts of the mall.
The Sears property includes the surrounding asphalt parking lot at the landlocked southwest far corner of the property, which has no frontage on
Colerain Av or Springdale Rd.
I followed along the next day during the online national auction and most bidders had dropped off when the price reached $2 million, with only
Colerain and another bidder remaining. The other bidder steadily went up to $2,220,000 and our agent went to $2,230,000.
The other bidder did not respond to our final bid and Colerain bought the building at auction.
As it turns out, there was indeed a private bidder that was willing to invest $2.22 million of new dollars in the property, possibly to open a
business within the existing structure or to maybe eventually acquire the remainder of the property; we may never know.
Since that time, we transferred the property to the Hamilton County Port Authority and they were able to get a demolition grant from the
State of Ohio to separate the building from the rest of the mall. When the Sears site is finally cleared, it is my understanding that we
can have the property titled back to us within 30 days of our request.
There is an approximate 200 page covenant that was drafted in 1971 to develop the property and was written at that time to bind the various
investor parties together perpetually. I have read it, including many amendments added over the years. It is complicated and will continue to
require a lot of legal resources if the Sears acreage is to be singularly redeveloped and ever have any access to the public roads.
My reasons for my NO vote include that we are an organization that does our best work when we stick to the fundamental responsibilities of
township government; Police, Roads, Fire EMS, Zoning, Code Enforcement, Public Works Etc. I am very proud of all of our employees and the
great work that we do together.
Looking around at other area malls, Eastgate is and will be tied up in court for years, Forest Fair has been an ongoing financial drain
and Tri-County will have city financial resources tied up for a generation, if they are ever finally able to move forward. These type of
transformative investments are better suited for well experienced private organizations that have large real estate portfolios and access
to the hundreds of millions of dollars that are needed to make the change happen. Our relatively small annual budget is committed to
salaries, benefits, police cars, fire trucks, road salt and asphalt. If we ever do want to buy a commercial building for revitalization,
we would be better to buy a free standing structure that did not have the numerous complications and mountain of financial
obligation that is the mall.
Where do we go from here?
I do understand the desire of my fellow trustees to try and make something happen at the site. The purchase is behind us now, and the
three of us now need to do our best to get the property cleared and remove any impediments to development. It is my hope that sometime soon,
we can find a financially viable organization that can move forward with a successful project.