Without a clear-cut plan in place, the old National Guard Armory won’t be seeing renovations anytime soon.
Grants are available for a project to fix up the building, but Mayor Paul Wiehl said he won’t apply for any financial help unless a goal is first established.
The city purchased the 13,000 square-foot armory, which sits at the north end of Court Street, and a property on Hudson Avenue from the Ohio National Guard in 1997 for about $250,000.
Less than an hour away in Marietta, city officials cut a multi-million dollar renovation project on their own armory down to $63,000 through seven grants and donations from private benefactors, said Jonathan Hupp, Marietta’s safety-service director.
But Marietta officials secured those funds without knowing what the building would be used for, Hupp said, adding that there isn’t even a definitive plan now that much of the renovation has been completed.
Still, Marietta city officials say they don’t have any regrets about securing the funding without a plan in place.
"The goal was to get it to a place where it was fiscally possible (to use),” said Andy Coleman, Marietta’s development director. “We wanted to keep the horses out in front of the car.”
Starting in 2006, the city of Marietta secured seven grants totaling about $1.6 million, Coleman said, adding that private donations paid for another $307,000 in matching funds.
Some of the money sources Marietta employed are no longer available to Athens, including about $323,000 that came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Other money, such as the $253,000 coming from a grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation, isn’t available to the Athens armory because of its location.
But by and large, Coleman said many of the grants Marietta benefitted from are “available to most cities.”
Despite the progress being made on a nearby armory, Wiehl said he’s not frustrated that renovation talks are at a standstill in Athens.
“Good things take time,” he said.
However, not all Athens city officials feel the same way.
“We would love to be able to find some money and grant funds, and we have been looking at that,” said Chris Knisely, Athens city councilwoman, D-at large. “What we are trying to do now is … prevent further damage. I’d hate to see anything like that fall into disrepair.”
Although plans for Marietta’s armory remain unclear, Knisely said she’s optimistic that Athens could soon follow suit.
“There’s hope out there,” she said.
sh335311@ohiou.edu
@SamuelHHoward
