A crew from McComb-based Advanced Demolition Services worked to bring down the former Hofeller, Hiatt and Clark men’s clothing store building Tuesday morning in downtown Lima.
Craig Kelly | The Lima News
LIMA — For the second time in less than a month, a demolition team was working at the corner of North and Main Streets in downtown Lima, with this team bringing down 237 N. Main St., the former home of the Hofeller, Hiatt and Clark men’s clothing store.
This demolition comes through brownstone project funding through the Ohio government administered through the Allen County Land Bank. Brownfield projects center around former commercial or industrial sites, safely demolishing any structures while mitigating or removing any environmental contamination. According to Allen County Auditor Rachael Gilroy, the land bank will be seeing more of this type of project in the future.
“There are a lot of brownfield needs in Allen County,” she said. “The land bank is equipped very uniquely as an entity specifically geared toward brownfield projects, and with this being our first one and, God willing, everything goes smoothly, we’ll be in the brownfield business.”
Gilroy pointed to the Riverfront One building on South Main Street as another brownfield project the land bank is coordinating in conjunction with the City of Lima, with ground monitoring machinery set to be on site later this week.
“That project’s going to take probably six to nine months to complete phase two of that project out there, just to make sure the building and the ground under it is safe,” she said. “We know what we’re getting into as the city goes further with the development of the project, but we do have an entire list of projects that we’ve submitted to the state that we’re waiting for approval on, things like the old county jail, the [tuberculosis] hospital [and] Lickety Split out on North West Street.”
Gilroy also noted that the land bank is waiting on half a million dollars in state funding to come through to target additional dilapidated residential properties in the county separate from the brownfield projects.
The demolition of the Hofeller building, along with the September demolition of the neighboring building at 221 N. Main St. will clear the area for the construction of the new county administration building, which is expected to be completed and occupied by Aug. 1, 2026.
