Two Cuyahoga County Council members say a manufacturing site on Cleveland’s East Side deserves a second look as a possible new jail location, despite the environmental cleanup required. 

At the heart of the site are 35 acres of industrial land that were once home to screw machine manufacturer National Acme Company and Republic Steel. Now, a set of old buildings stand crumbling on this corner ringed by Kirby Avenue, Coit Road and East 131st Street.

Council Members Sunny Simon and Cheryl Stephens argued at a committee meeting last week that the site could be cleared, cleaned and put to new use. 

They made their case even though council has already given Executive Chris Ronayne the green light to buy land for a new jail in Garfield Heights for $38.7 million. Both Simon and Stephens voted against that purchase. 

Simon maintains that the Cleveland site, located just off the Eddy Road exit on I-90, would be a better location than the largely empty land off of I-480 in Garfield Heights. 

“This is a 50-year investment,” Simon said in a phone interview Monday. The cost of clearing industrial land for a new jail, she said, “doesn’t outweigh the cost of putting it in the wrong place.” 

Cleanup needed at Kirby Avenue site

The county would need to mitigate environmental risks before building a jail and housing people at Kirby Avenue. A study commissioned by the county found elevated levels of potentially hazardous substances in locations around the site: arsenic and cadmium in the soil, vinyl chloride in the groundwater and other chemicals in soil vapor.

The assessment examined two parcels of land – or 35 acres – out of seven that could be assembled for a jail. Next door to the site are a former battery factory, another former steelmaker and a building labeled in the report as a “mustard agent disposal area.”  

After removing asbestos and razing buildings on Kirby Avenue, the county would have to cap the land with two feet of new soil or pavement. The county would also need a system in the new jail to prevent harmful chemicals in the soil vapor from leaching into the building. 

Partners Environmental vice president John Garvey, whose firm conducted the study, told council that the Kirby Avenue location was a “typical brownfield site.”

“Pretty much every industrial manufacturing operation you could have, we had between these two parcels,” he said. 

Included in Garvey’s presentation to council was a photo of piles of paper, cardboard and other garbage standing 8 to 10 feet high inside the National Acme building. Asbestos from the ceiling had fallen on top of the pile, he said. 

The decaying building has been a nuisance in the neighborhood for years. A decade ago, federal prosecutors accused a garbage company owner of filling the building with trash and directing a slipshod demolition that released asbestos into the environment. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison in 2017. 

Stephens called the Kirby Avenue site “workable and cleanup-able,” either for a jail or for some other use. The council member used to work for the Cuyahoga Land Bank, where asbestos removal is a routine part of the home demolition process. 

“We know that asbestos and lead are taken out of homes every day and families live in them quite healthily,” Stephens said. 

The county shared its environmental report on the Kirby Avenue site with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration, Public Works Director Michael Dever told council. The mayor wants to assemble such brownfield sites to attract new employers to the city. 

Ronayne backs suburban Garfield Heights as home for new county jail

With its industrial history and environmental cleanup needs, the Kirby Avenue site is similar to land on Transport Road that Ronayne opposed as a jail location. Instead, the county executive opted for the Garfield Heights spot. 

The Ronayne administration pitches the Garfield Heights site as clean and easy to acquire, with ample space for free parking. In an email, Press Secretary Jennifer Ciaccia called the suburban site the “best option” for the jail. 

“The location is environmentally safe and ready for construction,” she wrote. “The Eddy-Kirby site has several different property owners for acquisition and needs extensive demolition and environmental remediation that would significantly inflate the project’s cost.”

Remediating the soil and removing asbestos could cost an estimated $13.2 million, Ciaccia wrote, citing county advisory firm Project Management Consultants. Demolishing the buildings would add another $14.7 million to the expense, bringing the total price of preparing the land up to $27.9 million.

The suburban land is now unused and largely clear of buildings. Over the years, it supported single-family homes, an office building and a grocery store that never opened, according to a county environmental assessment. 

In its report, Partners Environmental noted construction debris and an inactive oil and gas well at the Garfield Heights site. But otherwise, the land appeared free from signs of environmental problems such as storage tanks and petroleum products. 

Still unresolved is how the county would pay the estimated $750 million in jail construction costs. In August, council voted against Ronayne’s proposal to extend the life of a quarter-percent sales tax that was levied 16 years ago to finance the downtown convention center. It is possible the tax could be brought back for another vote.

This article was updated with Cuyahoga County’s estimated demolition and remediation costs.

Suggested Reading

The high cost of a conversation from Cuyahoga County jail

Calls from the Cuyahoga County Jail cost 16 cents per minute, which is eight times as much as calls from an Ohio state prison. People locked up in the jail say the price of calls has made it a struggle to keep their families together, help care for their children and maintain their mental health.…

by The Marshall Project February 2, 2023February 2, 2023