New Battery Park gets green light

SANDUSKY — Cleanup at Battery Park will begin in the fall, the start of what is envisioned to be a transformative makeover of the 30-acre property along Sandusky's waterfront. It's a project the Sandusky city commission has long worked toward. "I supported the Marina District 20 years ago," city commissioner Dennis Murray Jr. said. "It was a close call at the time, but the city had few options for transformative development." The Marina District was a prior proposal to redevelop the Battery Park property that was never realized. Green light "We're cleared to move forward," said Jon Sines, director of development for the Marous Development Group, the lessor of the city's Battery Park and the project developer. "The remediation plan associated with the brownfield grant has been approved." The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has authority over the planning because the property is "submerged land," defined as areas permanently or periodically covered by water, typically found below the ordinary or mean high water mark. The park, not far from the downtown business district, is situated at Meigs Street where it meets Water Street. Marous has a track record of success working with the city, which inlcudes: • Redeveloping one building for a downtown City Hall and renovating two adjacent buildings for retail and residential living • Building the new BGSU building for the college's hospitality training and degree program • Renovating the downtown-based Feick building "We work closely with the city of Sandusky and Erie County officials throughout the remediation process," Sines said. First step The building that formerly housed Damon's restaurant is being removed along with the pavement and roads, the marina, the pool, underground storage tanks and other hazards. There also will be soil remediation at the site, Sines said. The new Battery Park is designed to be a transformative mixed-use development that will include retail, restaurants, green space, diverse housing options, multiple pools and a variety of other amenities. The estimated cost for the project is about $200 million. The total estimated cost for this first step — the remediation — is about $17.4 million. About $10 million of that is eligible for reimbursement through the federal brownfield grant, Sines said. "We expect physical work to begin this fall and anticipate the cleanup will take several months," Sines wrote in an email responding to questions. "Once demolition and remediation are complete, we'll be able to move forward with preparing the site for future development." Sandusky city manager John Orzech said city officials are excited to see the project moving forward. Murray said the city has made remarkable progress since the 2006 Marina District proposal was made during his first stint on commission and as commission president. "Today, the dynamics are very different," he said. "The city's huge head of steam allows us to be more particular about the developments we green light. The Marina District failed in large part because of the Great Recession (2008), although we tend to forget that." Other investments downtown "by many individuals and companies allowed us in to turn the opportunity to take years to carefully plan for Battery Park, and to choose an optimal partner and design." What are the enduring lessons? "First, decisions are hyper-contextual and depend upon specific options; the right decision at one point in time is the wrong one at another," Murray said. "Second, transformative events, including large investments, scramble the 'board' and afford a completely new and usually far-improved set of options. Third, planning makes all the difference in the world." He continued. "There was a time when Sandusky stacked studies on a shelf, but those ways are gone, and even those older studies have proven valuable to the work built on that foundation," he said. "Perhaps the best example is the Sandusky Bay Pathway. Its origins decades ago were both modest and improbable, but future iterations of those plans — and the tenacity of city staff and the commission — bring us to where we are today, having built out most of the pathway, with a major section (Cedar Point Drive to Hemminger Ditch near the Sports Center on Cleveland Road) under construction and on the cusp of take off for the Landing Park."