Maplewood Marketplace work approved

Environmental consulting contract for river trail OK’d

2/5/2013

Construction and consulting costs for two elements of the Maplewood Marketplace remodeling project were unanimously approved during a Sylvania City Council meeting Monday night.

City council also unanimously approved a one-year contract with SmithGroupJJR, of Ann Arbor, for environmental consulting services related to the Sylvania River Trail project.

Renovations to Maplewood Marketplace, at Maplewood Avenue and Main Street, began after Interrupt LLC, which operates as Interrupt Marketing, signed a 10-year lease for space in the city-owned building in December.

The company, which will bring a staff of 20 and a payroll of about $1 million, will lease about 6,500 square feet of the space in the building, and plans to move in this spring. The building houses other businesses, including the Treo restaurant.

Council approved a $2,775 proposal from Architecture by Design, Inc., of Sylvania Township, for construction-related consulting for the project that will be paid for from the city's capital improvement fund.

Sylvania Township-based PHC, Inc., will be paid up to $9,965 for removing one of two existing wood-frame garages on the site, which will improve Interrupt's building access and parking. Its work will include removing an existing concrete floor and pouring new concrete for parking, and has a Nov. 30 deadline.

The project is separate from the building's general remodeling, for which council in December awarded a $558,523 general construction contract to the Paul Avery Co, Inc. of Sylvania Township.

The $3,300 contract that council approved with SmithGroupJJR, meanwhile, conforms to an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency requirement that the city keep track of the environmental effects of building the Sylvania River Trail, which opened to residents in June.

The project included cutting trees, installing stream-bank stabilization measures, and building temporary stream crossings along the paved trail's scenic course along the Ottawa River and Ten Mile Creek between Flower Hospital and downtown Sylvania.

The city's state water-quality permit for the project requires annual assessments of the trail's impact, particularly related to controlling invasive plant species.

“As part of the permit that we received from Ohio EPA, there was a five-year monitoring term associated with that. The first year of that is coming up,” public service director Kevin Aller said.

"Probably 90 to 95 percent” of invasive species have been removed already, Mr. Aller said, and the consultant will confirm first-year compliance with the permit requirements.

“Our city staff has performed all of the work associated with the native-species protection and removing the invasive species and will continue to do that work," he said. "In the future, if the proper progress is shown, the requirements will be reduced."

SmithGroupJJR consultants will be assigned to inspect the area, take photographs, and compare their findings to original invasive-species counts in a report to be filed with Ohio EPA.

“This first year is pretty extensive,” Mr. Aller said, stressing the task's complexity. “It won't be a couple pages. It will be a document."

Contact Kelly McLendon at: kmclendon@theblade.com, 419-206-0356, or on Twitter at @MyTownSylvania.