St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 1126 Barr St., received approval Monday for a Brownfield Grant from the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission to investigate potential uses and remediation for property at 302 E. Jefferson Blvd.
The building on the downtown land was the former site of U.S. Health Works and includes an adjacent parking lot, all just north of the church. The grant is for 80 percent of the investigative costs or a maximum of $20,000, said Greg Leatherman, director of the Redevelopment Commission.
“The parking lot is the main thing we're interested in,” said David Rish, property trustee for St. Paul's, which has an agreement to buy the property based on 10 to 12 contingencies. An initial study found the property once had a service station on it. The church is looking at possibly a child-care center or preschool for the area, but no decisions have been made, Rish said. The building has about 6,700 square feet.
“We're doing our due diligence now. The final step is congregational approval,” Rish said. The church recently completed a $4 million renovation to its school.
The Redevelopment Commission also discussed minor changes in written plans for SIRVA's expansion at 5001 U.S. 30 W. Leatherman said the original request for CEDIT and TIF District funding was based on the company adding about 240 jobs to an existing 440 jobs, but the existing job number erroneously included part-time employees as well as full-time. The total number of jobs the company expects to offer within the next three years remains at around 700, so the Redevelopment Commission recommended no changes in funding $1 million over the next three years through Community Economic Development Income Tax (CEDIT) funds and Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) District funds.
SIRVA, which handles all aspects of relocation services, including home purchase and sales, moving of household goods, mortgage, home closing and settlement services, plans to invest more than $16 million in its expansion of the Fort Wayne-based national moving division. The Indiana Economic Development Committee (IDEC) also gave SIRVA up to $2.4 million in incentives based on job creation and retention plans.
