Cleanup Nears End at Royal China Brownfield

Work to clean up the long-contaminated former Royal China factory site in Sebring is nearly complete. 

About 1,800 truckloads of clean soil were delivered to the property over the summer to replace or encapsulate soil riddled with lead and other contaminants.

When the cleanup completion is confirmed, the property owner, Michael Conny, owner of MAC Trailer in nearby Alliance, will be eligible to apply for regulatory clearance to market the site for development.

The 20-acre site has been dormant since the 1980s, when Royal China, once a nationally prominent dinnerware producer with more than 700 employees, closed the plant after 80 years of operation. Buildings at the site were razed in 2010, but the huge expense of addressing the contaminated soil posed a barrier to redevelopment.

The Land Bank acquired the site in 2020 through a tax foreclosure and applied in early 2022 for a $1.5 million cleanup grant. In 2022, the state approved that grant as part of a new program aimed at restoring so-called “brownfield” locations across the Buckeye State. Those funds, plus local investments from Mahoning County and the property owner, paid for planning, testing and cleanup.

Top Photo: Jocelyn Borrell (right), a Land Bank employee and geology major at Youngstown State, discusses aspects of the Royal China soil remediation project with Jim Smith, left, president of Brownfield Restoration Group, and Carmen Conglose, president of Technical Resource Consultants.