Ground Breaking for the new Service Garage

                                                                                                                                 City of Olmsted Falls
                                                                                                                Ohio

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                                                                                                                                                                                   Contact: Bess Vrettos
September 22, 2015                                                                                                                                                                                                                 440.235.5550
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     bvrettos@olmstedfalls.org

 

CITY BREAKS GROUND FOR NEW SERVICE CENTER

New Facility to Expand City's Ability to Provide Vital Services

 

OLMSTED FALLS, OH -- Olmsted Falls Mayor Donegan joined other city officials today at a special groundbreaking ceremony for the new Municipal Service Center.  This project represents a culmination of many years of discussion and a year and a half of planning to create a new facility and will expand the community's ability to provide vital emergency and other city services to residents in every corner of the community.  The employees of the Service Department are some of our City’s finest and the new Municipal Service Center will serve as an anchor for Olmsted Falls city services.  The new center will be located at 9274 Columbia Road in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, behind the Olmsted Falls Fire Station.

The City has been evaluating ways to deal with the challenging issues facing the existing 50+ year old Municipal Service Center structure for many years.  The issues have forced the Service Department to operate out of many aging and substandard facilities, none of which are capable of meeting the Department's needs or serve as productive.  According to Olmsted Falls Service Director Borczuch, "Facilities are no longer adequate.  We can't get all our equipment indoors during the winter months and they have created widespread costly maintenance and operational issues."

As part of Olmsted Excellence and an aggressive economic push to expand our tax base, Mayor Donegan believes that this move will create yet another opportunity for growth in our downtown, residential and business district.  “By moving this complex to a location we already own, we can free up space and remove an eyesore from our downtown residential area.  It's going to enhance our ability to bring in businesses, make the area more attractive and ultimately improve our ability to serve the community," she said.

In a special City Council meeting, Olmsted Falls city planner George Smerigan explained that, "Virtually every city in Northeast Ohio has developed service centers for their equipment as it has been very well documented that there are increased maintenance and depreciation costs having very expensive equipment sitting outside during the winter months."  Additionally, he commented that moving the center out of the downtown area will free up a site that can be used for downtown economic development, which is obviously a more valuable and appropriate use of this property.

Finance Director Presley agreed, “The city has done its due diligence” and explained that significant ongoing repairs make it cost prohibitive to renovate and maintain the old structure.  The new location resolves two concerns, it’s less expensive to build a new structure than renovate the old and the new location of the Municipal Service Garage opens up valuable real estate for economic development.

"It's an exciting project," explained Donegan.  "It improves our ability to serve residents.  It's cheaper in the long run and it frees up prime real estate for new economic development.  It's a win for all of us." 

On September 8th,  the administration and City Council formally authorized the engagement of Star contractors to build this new facility.  The new 26,000 square foot Olmsted Falls Municipal Service Center will house equipment and administrative personnel.

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