CIRCLEVILLE – Last night during a Committee of the Whole Meeting on April 16, 2019 discussions of the fate of the Everts Building took a positive upturn.
“Five groups in the last week have contacted the City with interests in the building after Circleville Herald and Sciotopost did a story and we appreciate that,” said Council President David Crawford.
Several of these groups spoke in last night’s council meeting. Pickaway Diabolos was the first group to speak and said they had interest in just the facility wing side and not the gym. The Diabolos is a junior air rifle club in Circleville, Ohio that competes in 10 meter indoor air rifle at the local, state, and national level. They said they had the ability to capture several grants based on gun and gun safety that would help them fix the building. To maintain it they would hold classes for home safety classes, and gun classes not including conceal carry classes. Diabolos also said they receive some monies from the group in fees that currently pay the rent on their existing building, but that building is for sale now so they are looking and feel Everts could be their answer.
Bialy/Crossroads church said that they wanted to work together to take over the entire building. Bialy said that they were working on assessing costs to fix the building and were currently inside Everts last week. “This is a project we want to do for the community, said Bialy Corp.,”This isn’t like our other projects this is not for profit and for our kids. “We have the ability to fix anything and have fixed many non useful buildings in downtown Circleville already and invested 1.5 million dollars into those buildings, and they are thriving. We want to take the same exact principles and put them towards Everts. We are interested 100%, in fixing and maintaining the building for years to come.”
Bialy corp said they had interest in owning the building outright, with no city liabilities. Councilman Tom Spring interjected that with a City partnership they have acquired around 600,000 dollars in grants and monies to repair the building if they were interested in those monies. Bialy said nothing at this time is out and would be interested in talks about those possibilities also.
Bialy explained that they were working together with Crossroads church on this because the plan is for them to fix the building and maintain, but they do not have a product to go into the building once it is ready to go, “this is a community building and thats where Crossroads Church steps in.”
“Crossroads would open Everts as part of their Crossroads Christian Academy school,” said Dan Coy Senior Pastor Crossroads Church in Pickaway County. “We have outgrown our facility, we are currently in expansion mode. Thats what we want the entire 122,000 square feet of space.” Pastor Coy said they currently working with Logan Elm as a Charter for their school.
Crossroads Church would build a state of the art facility in this building, and being in the center of town Pastor Coy said, “Crossroads could be a good influence with kids that could walk there.”
The Pastor said as they stood outside of Everts waiting for a tour of the facility several kids approached him and asked to have access to the school. “They want a place to go thats close to them.”
When Circleville or Pickaway says what do you want to do tonight Crossroads church wants to be in the top 3 things in whatever we are doing to influence the area.”
Pastor Coy continued saying they would offer partnerships like Pickaway Diabolos who have interest in the building. Art centers like Arts around, and anyone else looking for a space they would talk to. “We are interested in giving access to people that see a vision for this space as we do.”
Other entities that have interest in the building that did not speak last night is a group relating to drug, alcohol and mental heath, Phoenix Integrated Health also a drug and addiction facility, and Spiro SP.
Listen to the entire Council of the Whole conversation with a Everts Tour here:
We will keep you up to date on developments.
