Once vacated and demolished, the site will be redeveloped into a modern three-story county administration building with consolidated county services and an above-ground parking garage.
The administration building and sheriff’s office is already in the process of moving its staff elsewhere, and should be entirely vacated by August, said Greene County Department of Development Manager Kristi Tidd.
“As soon as that admin building is vacated, that will be our first phase of the project,” Tidd said. “So we’ll get that one down, and then we will start with potentially, based upon population, on that jail. Whenever they’re going through their phasing of cycling out, we might start some remediation, depending on what that status is.”
The new Greene County Jail is currently under construction, and is planned to be completed by the end of the year.
Initial plans called for the demolition on the old Greene County Jail in the spring of 2025.
“This investment will allow for the safe assessment, cleanup, and revitalization of contaminated properties, paving the way for future redevelopment and community benefit,” Tidd said of the newly awarded state funds.
Ohio’s brownfield remediation program sets aside money to clean up hazardous chemicals or substances, perform demolition, or otherwise turn properties around the state into viable places for economic development.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Applying for state remediation money is highly competitive. Local agencies are not given much notice as to when applications will be open, and not much time to apply, Tidd said.
“(The online portal) was either going to be open for a period of time or until they had exceeded $150 million in requests,” she said. “They had received that amount, which shut down the portal, within a half hour.”
The old Greene County Jail, built more than 50 years ago, has been under a consent decree for about 35 years, which prevents overcrowding. Several functions of the jail have been retrofitted due to the state of the building, and one sally port is unusable due to a crumbling foundation.
Greene County’s facilities master plan calls for demolishing the downtown jail and the adjacent county administration building, and replacing both with facilities that would house much of the county services, including those that are on Ledbetter Road.
This would not only make county services more centrally located in downtown Xenia, but would also open up the county’s Ledbetter Road campus for businesses.
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