| << Front page | News | November 3, 2006 |
East College St. Developments
SCA Gets Local Grant
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Sign of the Times: The Rax sign lies in wait for its impending demolition. | ||
Sustainable Community Associates recently received a $30,000 grant that the developers say will enable them to help other young entrepreneurs hoping to set up shop in downtown Oberlin.
The grant was awarded by the Civic Innovation Lab, a project of the Cleveland Foundation, an organization dedicated to the growth and improvement of the greater Cleveland area. The Civic Innovation Lab grants combine funding with mentoring to enable groups like SCA to pursue innovative methods of development.
SCA will apply the grant to the commercial aspect of the mixed-use building they are planning. With it, they will dedicate between four and six of their storefronts to start-up entrepreneurs with inventive ideas. The developers said that they were specifically thinking of recent Oberlin College graduates.
“We’re really psyched about this,” said Naomi Sabel OC ’02, one of the three SCA developers along with Josh Rosen OC ’01 and Ben Ezinga OC ’01.
SCA plans to subsidize those storefronts to make them more affordable for businesses that are just starting up and apply the grant towards building an infrastructure of education and support that will enable new business concepts to get off the ground.
“We hope this will be a way of incubating innovative ideas within the context of the larger development,” said Rosen. The idea, he continued, is that the project will support young people who have a great idea but not necessarily the start-up capital or experience to start a business on their own.
Sabel, Ezinga and Rosen will offer expertise they have acquired through several years of running their first business and Civic Innovations Lab will provide mentors.
The ultimate goal, said Sabel, is for the new businesses to grow enough within a few years so they can afford to take the space of an empty storefront downtown.
“We’d be growing a homespun crop of entrepreneurs,” she said. “It’s a great idea for people who can’t afford to rent retail space on College Street or Main Street right away.”
SCA also hopes that the project will encourage more Oberlin graduates to stay in Oberlin. They are already accepting applications.
“A lot of successful businesses downtown are owned by alumni,” said Rosen, mentioning Ginko Gallery, Full Circle Fuels and Black River Café. “We’re trying to encourage that.”
Rosen added, “It would be the best thing that could happen in Oberlin if people who graduated stayed around. If you look at the people that have stayed around, you can visibly see the difference they’ve made.”
Oberlin’s City Manager Robert DiSpirito said that while he was not familiar with the ideas of the grant, it sounded like “another enhancement to their business plan.”
He added that most of City Council supported the project despite continued delays the project has experienced: “With the pace at which wheels of government turn, it’s not surprising.”
He added, “Especially as we get commercial development south of downtown, it is even more important to create retail space downtown.”
Sabel and Rosen emphasized that they are accepting ideas immediately and that those interested should visit sustainableca.com.
Sustainable Community Associates, the Oberlin students-turned-entrepreneurs working toward turning East College Street into a successful commercial development, hit another bump in the road toward the project’s realization. The Environmental Protection Agency of Ohio interfered with SCA’s progress when an Oberlin resident expressed concern that SCA had not properly disposed of waste materials.
This issue gained significant attention after being featured in two articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in early October.
According to EPA spokesperson Mike Settles, the issue began with the discovery of an underground storage tank buried at the East College Street property. Upon analysis, sand in the tank revealed high levels of lead, and was sent off to a hazardous waste disposal facility.
“Our issue is that they should have been using EPA’s guidelines rather than those of the Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Removal,” Settles explained. “EPA requires additional actions, [such as further analysis of soils].”e
SCA members Josh Rosen OC ’01, Naomi Sable OC ’02 and Ben Ezinga OC ’01, added that “EPA…[believes] that at the time the tank was pulled, EPA had jurisdiction of that site and not [BUSTR].”
Furthermore, SCA received a “No Further Action Required” notice from BUSTR, giving the community confidence that the matter had been handled efficiently and safely.
On Oct. 18, EPA sent district staff members to meet with Rosen, Sable and Ezinga.
“They took samples of the soil where the underground storage tank was to make sure the soils were not high with levels of contaminants, and to see what the developers had in mind for the sampling plan,” Settles said. “If the soils come back high [in contaminants], then we [will] have to see how to clean that up.” The results of these tests will not be ready for several weeks.
Settles was also quick to emphasize that while this was a legitimate issue that needed to be addressed, it is nothing people need to be concerned about.
“Frankly, from our perspective, this is not a high issue as far as environmental issues go,” he said. “We’re satisfied with the way things are progressing, and we’re confident that the matter will be handled appropriately.”
City Council Chairman Daniel Gardner also took a stance on the situation.
“SCA could not have known of the [EPA] violation when the site was being cleaned up,” he said. “Nevertheless, from the City’s point of view, I think that if the EPA has a different or higher standard for ensuring that the site is clean, we’d feel more confident if the developers had to meet both agencies’ criteria. The City is purchasing some of the land…so we have a direct interest in ensuring that it is clean.”
In a statement submitted to the Oberlin News-Tribune and to the Oberlin City Council, SCA further sought to quell concerns over whether the failure to initially meet EPA standards would have repercussions on citizens’ health.
“Following one agency’s protocols instead of another agency’s is a procedural issue. It does not affect the health of our site or the people in contact with it,” the statement reads. “The site was thoroughly tested before, during and after the tank was removed...We bought [this] property knowing that it was a brownfield and we bought it specifically to clean it up…We will approach the EPA’s concerns with that same cooperative spirit.”
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