CLIFTON -- Members of the public are invited to attend a community forum about potential redevelopment options for the former Jones & Laughlin (J&L) Steel site in southern St. Lawrence County.

This forum will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Clifton-Fine Community Center, 4208 State Highway 3, Star Lake, on Monday, June 26. Light refreshments will be served.

The event will provide an opportunity for community members to learn about revitalization opportunities, review and refine potential reuse scenarios, share feedback and community priorities, and help create a local vision and strategy for reuse at the J&L site.

The county acquired the property in 2013 under a “liability release” agreement, which frees it from liability for environmental contamination there. The vast property, which held 11 buildings as part of the company’s iron ore mining and processing operation, contains areas listed as state Superfund sites.

The county began tearing down buildings there last fall with an eye towards redevelopment.

At its height, the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation fed steel plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio an average of 1 million tons of iron ore sinter from the mine, known as Benson Mines before being purchased by the corporation. The ore was shipped down the Adirondack rail line of the New York Central from Clifton, through Harrisville, to Carthage and down to Watertown. The county hopes to rehab the line as well, budgeting $10 million to the repair.

The mine supported nearly 2,000 people in the region, and when it finally closed in the summer of 1978, 365 people lost their jobs. An auction in 1980 saw all of the equipment and materials at the site sold off, leaving empty vacant buildings which fell into a state of serious disrepair.

The deterioration of the buildings stood as a silent metaphor mirroring the state of the local economy in the region which suffered as well, first from the mine closure and then later from the shut down of the Newton Falls Paper Mill, the area’s other major industrial employer.

The Clifton-Fine Economic Development Corporation and St. Lawrence County are hosting this forum with the technical assistance of the USEPA Superfund Redevelopment Initiative (SRI).

SRI provides support through a range of tools to help communities reclaim and reuse formerly contaminated land. See https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment-initiative for more information, case studies and success stories from around the country.

Future public events will provide information about demolition, abatement and other remediation efforts at J&L.