Hamilton County looking to sell downtown buildings

Hamilton County is looking to sell a number of downtown buildings for condos or hotels. A tthree-person board of commissioners presented a year-long study that looked at the use and efficiency of the six downtown county-owned buildings, with an eye to consolidate to save on operational costs.
 
City commissioners are considering moving the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, which is currently in Corryville, and the main operations of the Board of Elections, which is located in a leased space downtown, to the former Mercy Health-Mt. Airy Hospital.
 
The average age of the downtown buildings is 100 years. Over the next 20 years, the six buildings are estimated to need about $170 million of work, and declining budgets means that the county has spent less than the industry average on the upkeep of the buildings.
 
The Times-Star building, which is located at 800 Broadway, currently houses the juvenile court and probation offices. The Alms & Doepke building is a former store on the north side of Central Parkway that now houses the county’s welfare offices. The study also looked at the county administration building on Court Street, the courthouse, the justice center and the prosecutor’s office.
 
The debt on all six buildings is $35 million, and individually ranges from $2 million to $11 million. Some of the debt stems from when the buildings were first acquired and some is due to improvements.
 
Several of the buildings have 15 percent of unused space.
 
Phase 2 of the study will examine the operational benefit of moving the offices to different buildings, or into the same one or two buildings.
 
By Caitlin Koenig
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