What does the public record document about the ALERG power-plant redevelopment — and who is tied to it?

Part 1 of 8The ground: a coal plant on the lakefront

The site is the former GenOn coal-fired power plant on Avon Lake’s Lake Erie shore — a 627 MW plant, by the reported figure in the title chain, on a 43.23 ac total footprint. In the record assembled here, title moved in 2021 to Avon Lake Environmental Redevelopment Group LLC (ALERG), and Charah is named as the redevelopment and remediation contractor. GenOn, ALERG, and Charah are the names this case matches on across the archive, along with the phrase “power plant” inside Avon Lake sources, so that a council minute that talks about the plant without naming its owner still counts.

It is worth saying at the outset what the entity register does and does not know. It knows the names as they appear on deeds, filings, and minutes. It does not know who stands behind them: corporate parents, principals, and financing beyond the recorded names are not established on this page. When the story says “ALERG,” it means the name on the record, nothing more.

What this part establishes. Which site, which names, and which words the scan looks for. It does not establish who controls the company that holds the land.

Part 2 of 8The title moves — on paper, for $0 recorded

Public reporting in the title chain places a GenOn → ALERG purchase agreement in May 2021, and gives April 4, 2022 as the date ALERG, described there as a Charah Solutions subsidiary, fully acquired the plant. The county’s paperwork tells the same story from a different angle. The Lorain County Auditor’s real-estate transfer table on this page lists 7 parcel transfers on one general-warranty deed for the seed parcels. That one instrument carries tax year 2021, was recorded on October 24, 2022, and is flagged on every row as exempt and “not a valid sale.” So three dates belong to one transfer — the agreement in 2021, the reported close in spring 2022, the recording that autumn — and the auditor files it under the tax year in which the deal was struck.

The number that draws the eye is the price. On the money ledger, the consideration recorded for those transfers is $0. Read that carefully: it is an exempt title transfer, not a priced sale on the money ledger. Presence of a transfer is not evidence of a payment, and absence of a recorded price is not evidence that nothing was paid; the transfer register’s own caption says so. What the record gives us is a form with a box ticked, and the context box below explains the box.

What this part establishes. Who took title, on what instrument, when it was recorded, and that the auditor treated it as exempt and not a valid sale. It does not establish what was paid, or why the exemption applied.

Part 3 of 8The clean-up so far

Remediation figures on this page are a snapshot, and the snapshot has a date. As of January, in the report cited on the panel, more than 36,000 tons of coal and 778 tons of asbestos had been removed, with demolition managed by ALERG and Verdantas named as environmental consultant. Those totals are reported as of that January snapshot; completion totals are not yet on this file. The panel’s limitation is the sentence to keep: a reported haulage figure is not a final close-out certificate. Tonnage tells you material left the site; it does not tell you the site is clean, and it does not tell you what a regulator has signed.

One of the two public-money figures on this page belongs to this part of the story. The Ohio Brownfield Remediation assessment grant is pinned at $300K (Ohio Dept. of Development, Brownfield Remediation assessment grant). Its name matters.

What this part establishes. How much had been hauled as of one report, who is named as managing the work, and that a state assessment grant is on the pin. It does not establish that the clean-up is complete, or what the assessment concluded.

Part 4 of 8The land, split two ways

The attested acreage pin splits the site as 43.23 ac total: 23.22 ac public park (53.7%) planned for a public lakefront park, and 20.01 ac remainder (46.3%) remaining for private redevelopment under the mixed-use overlay. These figures are labelled attested because a person pinned them from the agreement rather than the build deriving them. The panel’s limitation is the one to carry forward: the park acreage is the planned acquisition in the 2025 development agreement, not a completed transfer, and final boundaries follow closing and remediation.

What this part establishes. The planned split, as pinned from the 2025 agreement. It does not establish that either half has changed hands.

Part 5 of 8The money, in three separate states

Attested public-money figures stay in distinct states on purpose. The planned city purchase of the park acreage, financed by TIF, is pinned at $15M (City TIF / development agreement, 2025 (23.22 acres for a public lakefront park)). The assessment grant from Part 3 is pinned at $300K. And the deed from Part 2 records $0. Neither attested figure is merged with the $0 deed ledger into a “project total”; the money-states section keeps them apart because a planned purchase, a received grant, and an exempt deed with no recorded price are three different things. Placing them side by side is the claim the page makes — not an allegation of wrongdoing.

The phrase to slow down on is “financed by TIF,” because it links this part of the story to the previous one.

What this part establishes. Three dollar figures, each in its own state, and the general mechanism that ties the planned purchase to the planned buildout. It does not establish the terms of this TIF, nor a total cost of the project.

Part 6 of 8Council on the record

Council minutes matched to this case carry 69 of 69 machine-readable roll-calls (100.0%). That percentage is a coverage measure of the parser, not a count of votes about the site: of the 69 minutes documents that mention the case, 69 had at least one motion the pipeline could read into a member-by-member tally. One representative recorded roll-call on this page is Resolution No. 26-43, moved by Mr. Shahmir, motion passed, with the member votes shown in the example table.

The passage register narrows from “minutes that mention the site” to “measures whose text mentions the site,” and counts only the motion that decided each one — passage or adoption, not amendments or postponements. On that basis, Council has passed 28 measures that mention this site since May 2023. 22 were unanimous. Six split, and one member voted no on every one of them. The most recent of those votes was in May 2026. The closest was Ord. 26-36 on 2026-05-18, 4 to 3. The split votes are listed by date and matter number so that you can open the minutes and read the names; the passage and split-vote summaries above give counts, the roll-call matrix below names the members those counts resolve to, and the minutes remain the source record.

Separately, the minutes record 0 declared recusals on case measures and 11 at meetings whose minutes mention the case. The two figures are kept apart because they answer different questions. The first asks: did any member step aside from a measure whose text names the site? The second asks: at the meetings where the site came up, did any member step aside from anything? A recusal is counted from a motion to excuse entered in the minutes, not from any assessment of the tie behind it. One quoted excuse on this page records Council President Smith moving to permit Mrs. Goodwin to be excused from Ordinance No. 26-48 pursuant to Code §220.19(b), citing her seat on the board of Community Resource Services — an acknowledged tie for that vote as minuted, not a finding about any undeclared relationship. The recusal register’s limitation is explicit: an undeclared tie does not appear here by definition.

What this part establishes. How council voted on measures that mention the site, how often those votes split, and what members put on the record about their own ties. It does not establish why anyone voted as they did, or whether a tie went undeclared.

Part 7 of 8What the archive shows about attention

Keyword matches across the archive are counted separately from money and votes. The corpus register reports 645 keyword matches across 19 source groups, verified 2026-09-20. A mention is a keyword match on a case term, not a verified substantive discussion, and nothing in that scan connects the matches to one another. The bars also reflect how each source is shaped: a source that files many rows per year will produce many matches from a single fact, so a long bar measures how a record is structured as much as how much attention the site received. Where a matched document has no reviewed public URL, the receipts band keeps the title and marks the gap instead of hiding the row.

What this part establishes. Where, and how often, the case terms appear in reviewed public sources. It does not establish what any of those documents says about the site.

Part 8 of 8What this file cannot tell you

The gaps are listed with the claims, and they are part of the record: campaign-finance and Secretary-of-State entity ties remain deferred; undeclared ties do not appear in the recusal register by definition; corporate principals and financing beyond the recorded names are not established here; the price behind the 2021 exempt deed is not on the transfer record; the terms of the TIF and the status of the park purchase are not receipted here; the assessment grant’s recipient and findings are not on the file. Long agenda-pack text may be truncated by the source pipeline, so roll-call coverage measures stored Minutes records only. This file surfaces conjunctions in the record; it does not allege wrongdoing. For how pins, attested labels, and gap markers work site-wide, see How to read this site.

What this part establishes. The edges of the record. Where a question is open, the page says so rather than filling the space.