ASHLAND — The city is buying another building on Main Street.
Ashland City Council voted unanimously on the $25,000 purchase of 118 E. Main St. — also referred to as the “Frontier” building — on Tuesday night.
The 15,000 square-foot space has sat vacant since 2003, Ashland Mayor Matt Miller said.
The mayor said he has spoken to “very legitimate” prospects from the area who have expressed interest in buying the property in order to someday operate a mixed-use space.
“Something like retail on the bottom and housing on top,” Miller said.
The building, long owned by General Telephone Company of Ohio, has three floors that are reportedly in poor condition. Miller said the building’s front windows now have cracks in them.
Over the years, the mayor said there have been several ideas from entrepreneurs on how to use the space — including restaurants, retail and a car museum.
“It was always difficult to make headway,” Miller said of the owner’s corporate structure.
The mayor said he recently tracked someone down from Frontier, a woman from Dallas, Texas.
“I basically laid it out: ‘this is an eyesore for our downtown. We’d love to use that valuable space for some other productive purpose and someone needs to salvage the building before it becomes truly a public safety hazard,’ and so on,” he said.
Miller said Frontier indicated it would be willing to sell if the deal would close by Sept. 1. Also, the company asked that an internal easement be allowed with any new owners.
The company keepss equipment used for its telecommunications in the basement of the building.
“They want it off their books,” Miller said.
General Telephone & Electronics Corporation, or GTE Corporation, merged with Bell Atlantic in June 2000. The merger formed Verizon. A decade later, Verizon sold several of its former GTE properties to Frontier Communications.
The mayor said there are a few prospects, but declined to offer more details.
“We’re not in the real estate business in the sense that were trying to buy an old building and flip it for a profit,” he said. “We are simply trying to get that building into local hands.”
Should the city fail to find an end user, the city would have the option, he said, to apply for grant money from the Ohio Department of Development. The situation would be similar to 16 E. Main St., Miller said.
The city purchased the former Gilbert building at 16 E. Main St. for $12,000 in 2019. Grant money followed — first for the exterior renovation, and then for the interior.
In July, Cartolina on Main announced it would move into the fully renovated space.
But Miller was confident on Tuesday that the Frontier building would be resold to one of the few prospects he’s spoken to.
In that scenario, the new owner would buy the building through the Community Improvement Corporation of Ashland Ohio, but only after the prospect is vetted through the mayor.
“I would interact with the prospect and bring it back to council, who would have the final say,” he said.