The Ohio National Guard has broken ground on a $32 million readiness center in Lima, a new home for Guard units that have been operating out of a facility built in 1927, LimaOhio.com reported, and WLIO reported the groundbreaking as well.
The project replaces Lima’s current readiness center, which the state has described in its capital planning as a 1927 building with lead and asbestos hazards that no longer meets mission requirements because it is too small, according to an Ohio Controlling Board request for the project.
The new center was designed at 53,160 square feet to support individual and collective training, administrative, automation, communications and logistical requirements for the Ohio Army National Guard, according to the Controlling Board request, which the Adjutant General’s Department filed for the project’s design funding.
The design contract in that request went to American Structurepoint Inc. of Indianapolis through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission’s qualifications process, the request said. The Lima project is funded 75 percent with federal dollars and 25 percent by the state, according to the request.
The state document said the plan is to build the new facility and then sell the existing building. The units expected to occupy the new center are an engineering battalion, a recruiter detachment and a transportation company, according to the request.
Readiness centers are the Guard’s everyday footprint in Ohio communities — part training site, part administrative home, and the place local soldiers report when the Guard is called up for state duty, from flood response to community emergencies. A building from 1927, with the hazards and space shortages the state itself documented, had become the limiting factor for the Lima units.
The groundbreaking, reported by LimaOhio.com and WLIO on Nov. 9, moves the project from years of design and capital paperwork into construction. The $32 million figure reported by both outlets covers the construction of the new facility on state land in Lima, in Allen County.
For Allen County, the project is one of several large investments reshaping the Lima area’s institutions. NewsForce247 recently reported on Mercy Health’s new Community Paramedicine Program in Allen County, aimed at helping patients transition from hospital to home, and on a Rossford petition seeking a cap on future data centers, part of the wider Northwest Ohio debate over what gets built where.
The project has been moving through the state’s capital process for years. The Controlling Board request covered $3,022,739 in professional design services for the Lima center — $2,267,054.25 in federal-share capital funds and $755,684.75 in state funds — with American Structurepoint selected through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission’s request-for-qualifications process to produce everything from the program of requirements and schematic design through construction documents and construction administration, according to the request.
The Lima site also sits along the Interstate 75 corridor, where the Guard’s engineering and transportation units are positioned for the state missions — road, bridge and logistics support — that Ohio calls on most often.
That corridor is seeing heavy investment on the civilian side, too. The Allen Economic Development Group has said Google will build a data center near Lima with a $500 million capital investment — one of the largest private-sector commitments in the region’s history — including $50 million for local infrastructure upgrades, according to the development group. A modern readiness center gives the Guard a facility built for the same era of growth, rather than a 1927 building the state says carries lead and asbestos hazards.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: the groundbreaking has happened, the project is priced at $32 million in the LimaOhio.com and WLIO reporting, the state’s own Controlling Board request describes a 53,160-square-foot center funded three-quarters by the federal government, and the new building is intended to replace the 1927 facility, which the state then plans to sell. What we’re still waiting on: a construction completion date and a move-in schedule for the engineering battalion, recruiter detachment and transportation company, which neither report set out.
What happens next: construction proceeds on the new center while the Lima units continue operating from the 1927 building, with the sale of the old facility to follow the move, per the state’s plan in the Controlling Board request.