By Ryan Smith
Meadville Tribune
MEADVILLE —
When the Crawford County Courthouse was being expanded around the mid-1950s, according to officials, its planners predicted the facility would be large enough to meet the county’s office needs through the turn of the 21st century.
It turns out they were mostly right, but flash forward to the present day, and it’s apparent “there’s just no room for anything anymore,” said county Commissioner Morris Waid. “We’re out of space.”
Now, the county is pursuing the possibility of gaining more space — a lot more space — in the form of the Talon Business Center, the massive upper-Arch Street landmark that was transferred back from a private owner to the Meadville Redevelopment Authority in March. The authority had sold the building to Scott Bryer on Aug. 8 , 2008, for $350,000 and had been working to find financing to help him with the project and renovate, but plans did not work out. Decades ago the facility was an office and manufacturing hub for Talon, the zipper maker.
County commissioners recently approved signing an agreement that gives officials 90 days to examine the property’s roughly 240,000 square feet of floor space and eight acres of land to determine if it will suit the county’s needs. If the county buys it will pay about $250,000 for the building.
“It’s an option,” said Waid, and, if a viable one, it could be an “opportunity to pull a lot of offices out of the courthouse” at Diamond Park that aren’t directly related to the county’s court system, including offices like the commissioners’, voter’s services, the county treasurer and planning headquarters and others.
If the county were to purchase the Talon facility, it could also consider moving other county offices that are currently at other satellite locations around the immediate area there. Crawford County Human Services, for instance, had formerly been located at the Talon facility but has since moved to the county Economic Progress Alliance incubator property in Vernon Township.
As demonstrated by that property, “you can take an old industrial site and adaptively re-use it” as low-impact office space, said county Planning Director Jack Lynch. “There are lot of upsides” to pursuing the option to buy it, and the 90-day agreement — locked in by the county for a pricetag of $10,000 — “gives us the standing to step up and do some hard-testing” of the property.
That testing, officials said, will require enlisting the services of an architectural engineering firm to profile the property and determine if it’s suitable for the county’s needs. One area of concern, according to officials, is the facility’s outdated central steam heat boiler system.
“We’re aware of the heating bills on that building, and they are astronomical,” said Waid.
He indicated that if the county were to purchase the facility, one way to resolve that issue could be to isolate and close off areas that aren’t in use.
Officials would also have to determine how to best incorporate county offices with the 20 other various tenants currently renting office space at the facility.
“We’ve got to do a lot of investigating yet,” said Waid. “A lot of things have to take place” before the decision of whether or not to purchase the facility at an overall price of around $250,000 is complete.
Jill Groves, MRA’s executive director, has repeatedly stated the authority is not seeking to operate the facility long-term. “It’s always been the (authority’s) policy,” she said, that it “would put as many properties as possible into other hands.
“I feel very optimistic,” she said of the purchase option agreement now under way. Now, “the county has to take the lead” moving forward.
Ryan Smith can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at rsmith@meadvilletribune.com.
