ASHLAND – Ashland County Land Reutilization Corporation, also known as the Land Bank, has agreed to pay off a $123,000 IRS lien on the Pump House Ministries office building.
In exchange, Pump House Ministries founder and president Bruce Wilkinson has agreed to give the 400 Orange Street building to the Land Bank in lieu of foreclosure.
Once the Land Bank pays off the IRS lien and acquires the property, it will have the power to clear all other liens on the property, said Land Bank board member and Ashland Mayor Matt Miller.
“When we first created the Land Bank, this is the project we talked about in every meeting,” Miller said. “We wanted to put into place an organization that could clear tax liens so we could repurpose property.”
Land Bank president and county commissioner Denny Bittle said he feels it is important for the Land Bank to have control over who ends up with the property.
“The risk is, if we let it go to foreclosure, we don’t know who would acquire that property and we could be in the same boat that we are in now,” he said. “I don’t think we can take the chance of someone getting a hold of that piece of property and not doing anything with it.”
Bittle emphasized the Land Bank’s check will go directly to the IRS. Pump House Ministries will not receive any money in the transaction.
The Land Bank’s action will remove the lien from both the office building and the Revivals 2 Thrift Store Building. Though the new operators of the thrift store business believed they were buying the property from Pump House Ministries on a land contract, they were unaware of the lien on the property, Bittle said.
Once the lien is cleared, Pump House Ministries has agreed to give the thrift store building to the City of Ashland, according to Bittle.
Miller said city officials have not yet taken steps to acquire the thrift store building but expect to sell or repurpose it to recoup some of the cost of cleaning up the rubble pile at the former Pump House property.
To ensure funding is available for the lien payment, the Land Bank will open a $50,000 line of credit with Sutton Bank, which has agreed to provide the credit at a 3 percent interest rate. Bittle said the land bank has approximately $144,000 and may not need to use the line of credit, depending when it received anticipated grant income.
Both Bittle and Miller said Land Bank board members feel confident they can recoup the $123,000 by selling the office building property to an end user.
Though the Land bank board has not decided on a process for determining an end user, Bittle said he would recommend the board offer the property first to the city and then to the county before offering it for sale to a private entity or for auction.
Bittle has expressed an interest in seeing the county end up with ownership of the property. He envisions it could be used as a service center containing county offices and offices for community organizations.
In addition to authorizing the acquisition of the Pump House office building, the Land Bank board took action to hire Erin Collins as director. Collins previously served as the Land Bank’s assistant director while she worked for Ashland Area Economic Development, but the Land Bank lost its contract with AAED for Collins’ services when Collins resigned from AAED.
Collins initially took a job as assistant to Ashland University President Carlos Campo. She served in that role just a few weeks before being hired Thursday to a newly created position of business administrator for the Ashland County Commissioners.
Collins will start both new jobs Monday, May 13. She will be paid $18 per hour to work 30 hours a week in the commissioners office, and she will receive $15,000 annually to work for the Land Bank as a contractor.
