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Cafaro Co. offering Howland location for USDA federal building site
By Ed Runyan
HOWLAND
Two Howland Township locations were submitted to the federal government as possible sites for the relocation from Washington, D.C., of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and/or National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Expressions of interest came from 136 sites in 35 states. The deadline to apply was Oct. 15.
One of the two Trumbull County locations is the Cafaro Co.-owned Enterprise Park property off state Route 46 near Sam’s Club.
Joe Bell, Cafaro Co. spokesman, said the Cafaro Co. is offering space in the proposed 50-acre Enterprise Park site near Sam’s Club or other tracts of Cafaro property nearby. For example, the company has land not far from the Hampton Inn near Route 46 and the Home Depot, he said.
Enterprise Park is also the location where the Cafaro Co. said recently a handful of companies are interested in locating, including St. Joseph Warren Hospital.
Part of the plan for Enterprise Park is for contruction of an office building, so that could be the location for the USDA site, Bell noted.
The other proposed Howland location is the Warren-owned Old Avalon Golf Course on East Market Street. The Western Reserve Port Authority, which has been marketing several pieces of city-owned land, proposed the golf course site.
The USDA announced plans to move the two federal agencies and their hundreds of employees out of Washington, D.C., by the end of 2019 and requested “expressions of interest” from communities across the country.
Agencies offering sites include universities, economic development agencies, cities, governors, members of Congress, farm organizations and companies such as the Cafaro Co., which also offered a site in Fredericksburg, Va.
“We realize there is a lot of interest, but since we have available property, we would be remiss if we didn’t express our interest and offer it to the USDA,” Bell said Wednesday.
Residents living near the proposed Enterprise Park development received notices in August from the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency about the environmental impacts of constructing Enterprise Park. It was an indication that the Cafaro Co. is doing the ground work to prepare to develop the site, Bell said.
The park consists of about 50 acres at the end of Hiram Place. It’s about half of the land the Cafaro Co. owns there, Bell said. It’s the same land the Cafaro Co. proposed for construction of a second North American headquarters for Amazon last year.
Darlene St. George, Howland Township administrator, said the Enterprise Park property and residential streets Hiram Place, Kenyon Drive and Dawson Drive all have the same type of commercial zoning as Sam’s Club.
The residents successfully petitioned the township to change the zoning from residential to commercial years ago, St. George said.
Ohio organizations and companies offered 10 sites, including ones in Middlefield, Akron, Twinsburg, Madison and the counties of Ashtabula and Geauga. The only proposed Ohio site not in Northeast Ohio is in Darke County near Dayton.
Four sites are proposed in Pennsylvania, none in the northwest part of the state.