Breaking Ground on Close to Home III

When our program team met Sharon Hartwig and Charlie Kunkel, co-owners of St. Lawrence O’Toole Gardens, we were inspired by their dream of reclaiming a vacant, historic building for their community.  We’re proud to announce that dream came one step closer to reality last Friday when Lawrence County’s only assisted living center to be called Close to Home III, broke ground on the site of the old St. Lawrence O’Tool Community Center.

Upon completion, Close to Home III will create 30 new jobs.

“Finding a new use for this important historic building is a point of pride for the Ironton community,” Charlie told me. “Lawrence County has needed an assisted living facility for quite some time. We look forward to bringing this new resource to the region.”

The Close to Home III project will rehabilitate the now vacant St. Lawrence O’ Toole Community Center, originally built in 1910 as the St. Lawrence School. Its owners, St. Lawrence O’Toole Gardens, will build a 8,316-square-foot addition and making structural and sidewalk improvements. Of the 30 positions created by the project, 16 will be filled by individuals of low or moderate income.

Finance Fund partnered with the developers at St. Lawrence O’Toole Gardens, LLC by providing $2.7 million in New Markets Tax Credits funding. Also funding this project were the Ohio Department of Development, with a $500,000 grant from the Community Development Block Grant Economic Development Program, and a loan from the Huntington, West Virginia-Ironton, Ohio Empowerment Zone, Inc.

We also thank the Ironton Tribune for their nice story about the event.  You can read it here.