BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON -- The former Mosler Safe Co. property, a Hamilton icon for generations, is being reincarnated.
The Community Improvement Corp. (CIC) is teaming with a North Carolina company to redevelop the 12-acre site for commercial, service and retail businesses. The project is expected to take about three years.
Plans are to employ more people than Mosler did at the time the company closed in 1996, said Dan Evers, the city's director of development. Mosler, which opened in Cincinnati in 1867 and moved to Hamilton in 1891, had employed about 200 people, Mr. Evers said.
"The closing of the plant had a real emotional cost to our community. Here was a factory that had employed hundreds of people -- literally generations of families of our town -- and it was gone," Mr. Evers said. "A tangible part of our past had left us."
That's one reason the property's revitalization is important to Hamilton, Mr. Evers said.
Another reason: The Mosler property sits at Grand Boulevard and Ohio 4, "one of the most prominent entrances to our town," Mr. Evers said. Fixing up the site will give visitors a better impression of the city, he said.
The CIC, which is a nonprofit economic development corporation, announced Friday it will issue $3.5 million in bonds to buy the site. The bonds will be backed by a letter of credit from Brownfields Remediation of North Carolina, a private company.
Then, the CIC-Brownfields partnership expects to invest about $10 million to demolish, rehabilitate and redevelop the property, Mr. Evers said.
