The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News November 19, 2004

Battle over Amherst resort

A British-based company’s plans to convert a 900-acre, western Lorain County stone quarry into an upscale hotel and housing complex may be thwarted by another company’s interest in building an asphalt plant only a few miles away.

In May, Trans European Securities International LLP purchased the site, currently home to Cleveland Quarries, in hopes of building a development that would highlight a golf course, ski slopes, water park, resort hotel and gated community known as the “Cleveland Quarries Project,” accoding to the Elyria Chronicle Telegram. Last month, residents of Amherst, south Amherst, and Brownhelm Township met to discuss the proposed developments, but conflict arose when a company known as Hoty Enterprises announced an intent of its own to build an asphalt plant three miles away at Cooper-Foster Park and Baumhart roads. Trans European responded that the plant might produce bad odors, reported the Chronicle Telegram.

According to Director of the Lorain County Community Development Department Ron Twining, Hoty Enterprises withdrew its zoning variance on Monday, Nov. 1. He added that the “asphalt plant understands the implications of the project” and is “holding off to see if they can find an alternative location, not to affect the city of Lorain.”

Twining said that Hoty Enterprises is currently awaiting the approval of the county communities and property owners. His opinion is that “everyone likes the benefits of an aslphalt plant, such as paved roads, but no one wants to smell it.”Regardless of the potential dispute between Hoty Enterprises and Trans European, the project is still proceeding with its early planning stages, said Neil Pike, an architect with Trans European, to the Chronicle Telegram. To the Plain Dealer, he added that, in the event that Hoty is given the license to build its plant, Trans European does not have an alternative site in mind “as unique and demographically satisfying as [the Cleveland Quarries]” but that finding one was “not an impossibility.”
 
 

   

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