Former old Reid Hospital site owner settles delinquent property tax lawsuit with Wayne Co. for $75k

RICHMOND — After an eight-year legal battle, Wayne County Commissioners have settled a lawsuit they filed against the former owners of the old Reid Hospital site in Richmond.

The financial agreement is worth $75,000.

This is a story News Center 7 has been following for years. The old Reid Hospital site used to be one of the biggest eyesores in the Miami Valley. It was covered in graffiti and there were arsons in the abandoned buildings on the property. Plus, there were plenty of trespassers including ghost hunters who posted videos documenting their treks through the empty hospital buildings online.

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Here’s some quick history about the property and how things got to that point:

Reid Health moved out of its old main campus along Chester Boulevard and up the street to its current main campus in 2008. Reid Health hasn’t had anything to do with the property since they moved and sold it to Spring Grove Development, LLC.

After the sale, Spring Grove changed hands too. The two principals were two business partners from Delaware: Bob Ciprietti and Ernesto Zamparini. The pair had plans to redevelop the property, but they walked away from the project and stopped paying property taxes.

The delinquent tax bill ballooned to north of seven figures. “Oh, it was in excess of a million,” Wayne County attorney Ron Cross told News Center 7 Wednesday. “I don’t have the exact number.”

In 2013, WHIO reported Wayne County Commissioners filed a civil lawsuit against Ciprietti and Zamparini. The suit sought to hold the pair personally responsible for more than $1.3 million in unpaid taxes, penalties and fines. “Spring Grove Development as an entity has long since been administratively dissolved by the Indiana Secretary of State,” Cross said. “And the county then felt it necessary to pursue the individual members that owned Spring Grove Development. And that would be Mr. Ciprietti and Mr. Zamparini.”

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As that legal fight dragged on, the City of Richmond eventually bought the property. News Center 7 was there as the crews started demolishing buildings on the lot in December 2017.

And now, comes the settlement of a lawsuit that’s been at the center of a court battle since 2013.

“We settled with Mr. Ciprietti for $75,000,” Cross said. “And we have not settled with Mr. Zamparini against whom we have a judgement for the full amount that’s in excess of $1,000,000 million … and actually this was done on what’s known as a contingent fee basis, which means there will be a fee owed to the attorneys who collected it and their firm. And they have not indicated a desire to pursue the other owner in this. And so, the commissioners will have to determine whether they want to try to find a willing attorney to represent them in the collection activities against Mr. Zamparini.”

Cross said the money Wayne County gets from the settlement with Ciprietti will go into the county’s general fund.

The City of Richmond is currently working on redeveloping the site of the old Reid Hospital. News Center 7 will track that work and bring you updates about what ends up there someday.

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