Columbus Parks and Recreation Board members will have a special meeting Wednesday to consider buying an environmentally-contaminated industrial building on Jackson Street which is owned by Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop’s aunt.
The board will convene for a special meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Columbus City Hall’s council chambers to consider the purchase agreement with Norma Lienhoop, an agreement which has been in negotiations since last year.
Columbus Parks and Recreation Department has been hoping to buy the vacant former Machinery Moving building at 1360 Jackson St. for months. Mayor Jim Lienhoop has recused himself from all negotiations or decisions about the building and has repeatedly referred all questions about the transaction to parks officials handling the negotiations.
Parks board members said in March they would not purchase the property unless environmental issues from underground storage tanks were cleaned up without using any local tax dollars. The contamination on the property, revealed in two environmental evaluations from an outside contractor, includes benzene and other petroleum-related chemicals that were found in soil and groundwater on the property.
The city began searching for grants to pay for the chemical contamination cleanup this spring, parks officials said in March. A state grant from Indiana Brownfields, a statewide program that assists in the redevelopment of brownfield properties, agreed to pay for remediation of the site, but only if the property is in the city’s ownership — not owned by a private citizen such as Norma Lienhoop.
Columbus Parks Director Mark Jones said the city is purchasing the property on Indiana Brownfield’s timeline to ensure no local tax money is used to pay for any remediation. Indiana Brownfields gave the city a July deadline to complete the purchase of the Norma Lienhoop property.
For more on this story, including details about the purchase price and agreement, see Wednesday’s Republic.
