EAST PALESTINE, Ohio – Robert Ritchey walks into the living room of a new home on Hillside Drive in East Palestine.
“This one is two bedrooms, two bathrooms,” the Columbiana County Land Bank executive director explains, adding it includes a two-car garage, patio and deck.
It’s one of two new houses built this year on Hillside in the Leslie Run development, and among six countywide by the land bank.
After years of concentrating mostly on demolitions, the land bank has moved into economic development including residential construction and brownfield redevelopment with funding from the Welcome Home Ohio program and other Ohio Department of Development initiatives.
“We’ve gone from doing a lot of these demolitions to stabilizing where we’re at today,” Ritchey says. “A lot of our neighborhoods, and even in the city of East Liverpool, where we’ve done over 275 demolitions, we’ve really watched it stabilize.”
Changing Work
The change is part of the maturation of land banks across the state, moving from demolition to economic development. Programs like Welcome Home Ohio allow the land bank to focus on infill housing, something needed throughout the county, he says.
“And what’s nice about the Welcome Home Ohio program in Columbiana County is not only are we focusing on new construction, but we also have a funding piece to help stabilize existing housing stock,” Ritchey explains. “We have money that is available for us to start identifying properties in multiple different communities where we can rehab that home and get that home back on the market.”
The land bank’s work spans the whole county. The northern portion, including Columbiana, Salem and Leetonia, has experienced industrial and residential growth. In those communities, the land bank’s residential work involves building single houses on individual parcels.
East Liverpool though, boasts a lot of land. The land bank offers a mow to own program where homeowners mow the vacant lot adjacent to theirs for a certain time period after which they’re able to buy them. But the land bank also is working with organizations including the East Liverpool Community Improvement Corporation to identify sites for development.
“And what’s nice too is we’re also using our brownfield dollars to clean up sites in multiple communities,” Ritchey says. “We’re looking at potential spec building space, or we are looking at an area that used to have a manufacturing site in a residential area, turning that into residential once we get that property cleaned up.”
Once the lank bank has finished its six new homes, it will pivot to the Welcome Home Ohio grant’s rehabilitation phase. Those homes are being identified and Ritchey expects the grant will enable the land bank to rehabilitate six.
Maintaining Neighborhoods
HSH Contractor of Lisbon is the builder for all of the new homes and Ritchey says the company took care to ensure the new builds match the style and character of the respective neighborhoods.
“I like to perform business with some ethics behind it, and we don’t want something that doesn’t look like it belongs,” Erik Liber, HSH president and CEO, says of the houses.
“We want to make sure that they kind of blended right in.”
Liber, a Columbiana County native who still lives there, says the land bank construction project appealed to him because it spanned several communities. And reactions have been encouraging.
“Everything’s been very positive, whether it be neighbors on the projects, community leaders, just whoever is commenting,” the company CEO says. “Everyone’s very appreciative of the quality of work, the speed that we’re getting done and the increased housing stock.”
He’s passionate about the county, calling it a great place to do business.
“It’s very we-minded,” Liber says. “It’s not about ‘how does this help me.’ It’s about how it helps us, and I align very strongly with that. And it’s a very, very community driven area, and I thrive under that.”
He encourages others to do business in Columbiana County as well.
“It’s just a great county with great people, and it’s a smooth path,” Liber says. “They’re here to work with you, not against you, and that’s a breath of fresh air with a lot of the work we’ve done at other places. It’s much more inviting.”
Needed Housing
Roman Ferry, Leetonia village manager, said the land bank’s new construction is a welcome addition to the community.
One new house was built where a house sat vacant for about three years after it was damaged in a fire. No one bought it.
“Once the land bank got into the Welcome Home Ohio program, that was one of the lots that they identified to be a potential qualified project,” Ferry explains. “That’s where they demolished the home, and they started a new one.”
Initially, village officials weren’t sure what the community’s reaction would be to a new home built through the state program, he says.
“We’ve been blown away at how positive the reaction has been,” the village administrator adds. “People are happy to see that property being used again, rather than the eyesore that it was before.”
The house is nearly finished and the village turned on the water for it in late September.
“Hopefully, it sells to a good family and we grow our community,” Ferry says.
Like most of the Mahoning and Shenango valleys and much of the state and country, Leetonia faces a shortage of housing that’s both desirable and affordable. Ferry, 26, has experienced it too. He’s renting but would like to buy a house.
“I’ve seen multiple houses, not just here in Leetonia, but in the surrounding area, where they want an absurd amount of money for a home that you can’t even move into day one,” he says. “And the homes that are eligible to move in immediately are just simply not affordable due to debt or other reasons.”
In East Palestine, the problem is a lack of land to build homes, says Antonio Diaz-Guy, village manager.
“We have a fair amount of new builds given the amount of land we have,” he explains. “But we’re almost out of land. There’s zero vacant lots in East Palestine that aren’t cooperatively owned…We’re happy to add to the housing stock because we don’t have a population problem because of attractiveness. We have a population problem because of housing stock.”
Houses in the village, even those that need work, get snatched up as soon as they hit the market, he says. “We’d love to build more houses, and this helped.”
Village residents and newcomers from other areas make up the buyers, including people from western Pennsylvania. One family came from Arlington, Va.
“It’s really sort of like a boomerang,” Diaz-Guy says. “They went and made a career in Virginia, had kids…and now they’re moving back to the area. Those people were originally from Mahoning County, and they’re moving back to East Palestine because their kids live in Poland.”
Ritchey too has seen a lot of interest from people from outside of the area in the homes the land bank is building and selling. That includes people from western Pennsylvania as well as Texas and Colorado.
Desirable Community
They may find the county searching on the Multiple Listing Service or they have a particular interest in northeastern Ohio, he says.
“And that’s really the point,” Diaz-Guy adds. “It goes the same for businesses or homeowners. This is a great place to be. The issue is just, are there vacancies that people can take advantage of? And the typical answer is no because the houses are full.”
The Welcome Home Ohio houses could act as a catalyst in a neighborhood with one or two vacant parcels left when houses were demolished, he says.
Both of the new houses on Hillside Drive have generated a lot of interest from prospective buyers. A bidder for one is going through the approval process and Ritchey expects that will be successful.
The land bank is also building houses in Lisbon that will go up for sale. Those are smaller than the two in East Palestine, but they fit with the neighborhood.
The price of the two East Palestine homes is $180,000 and in Lisbon, the prices are $149,900 and $159,900. Buyers must meet income and owner occupancy requirements set by the state.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from our community just to see new homes being built and kind of restoring and stabilizing those neighborhoods,” Ritchey says.
Pictured at top: Robert Ritchey, executive director of the Columbiana County Land Bank, left, and Antonio Diaz-Guy, East Palestine village manager, on the rear deck of a house at 115 Hillside Drive in the village that the land bank built.
