The former Smurfit-Stone facility in Circleville, Illinois (in operation for more than a hundred years but left vacant over the last decade) will be cleaned up and redeveloped. Investors will get $750,000 from the Clean Ohio Assistance Fund to remove asbestos from all structures on the property before they are demolished.
The property may be redeveloped as an ethanol plant—the eighth in Ohio—but other possibilities are also being considered. The focus of the project is not to create an ethanol plant, but rather to develop the brownfield site as a clean, productive facility that will create jobs for area residents. Green Investment Group, a trio of former steel company execs, redevelops brownfield sites as alternative fuel, energy technologies or recycling projects.
Bids are being accepted now, and the property should be cleaned up by mid-2009.
For the full story, go to the Columbus Dispatch.
