by CINCINNATI — The Hamilton County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved the purchase of the former Mercy Health building in Bond Hill.
With this purchase, the region will start moving thousands of employees to the new office space in the coming months.
The sale cost $95 million, and Mercy Health is paying $30 million of that price tag. The rest is expected to come from the sale of county buildings that currently house various offices, which will be consolidated into the new building.
The offices being combined include Job and Family Services, Developmental Disabilities Services, Hamilton County Public Health and the Veteran Service Commission.
The Alms and Doepke building, which houses JFS, is one of the buildings for sale.
“We’ve been getting calls about the Alms and Doepke building for years,” said Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus. “Developers come by every once in a while and say, ‘Hey, is that building for sale?’ but in the past the answer has been no.”
Driehaus expects that the building will be redeveloped now that the council has given its approval on Tuesday.
“I expect that there will be a lot of interest and that we will transform it into a residential area,” said Driehaus.
Last year, several companies in the city centre were concerned about employees leaving the city centre.
“We really rely on, especially, city and county employees for business here,” said Chris Breden, owner of Arnold’s Bar & Grill. “Before the pandemic, we were obviously a lot busier during lunch.”
Breden is optimistic about what will happen in the future when the JFS offices are replaced.
“I don’t know if they’re going to work in the city centre because we want to increase the lunch business, but I’m happy anyway if there are more people in the city centre,” he said.
