The Pellet Terminal property sits on a stretch of Lorain’s waterfront with a long industrial lineage. In the late 1800s, the area hosted rail spurs, stockpiles, and loading zones for raw materials moving through the steel corridor. A major chapter began in 1980, when Republic Steel built a modern ore-handling terminal capable of moving roughly six million tons of iron ore pellets annually. Lake freighters delivered ore to the site, where it was stockpiled, reloaded, or shipped inland by rail. Over time, those operations tapered off, and by 2003 the last ore shipment had left the property. The conveyor systems and equipment were removed soon afterward and reassembled at Whiskey Island in Cleveland.
Well before the pellet terminal era, another industrial operation left a mark on part of the site. Brush Beryllium once operated here until a fire destroyed its facility in 1948. That legacy explains why a portion of the soil beneath today’s asphalt parking area still contains elevated levels of arsenic, beryllium, and benzo(a)pyrene. Those materials were identified during the City’s 2023 environmental investigation and needed to be removed or remediated before development could continue on this site.
The City of Lorain, which acquired the site in the early 2000s, carried out major remediation work in 2023 and 2024. This included removing contaminated soil, constructing a new parking lot that both serves the public and acts as a long-term engineered barrier preventing contact with the contaminated soils beneath it, and preparing the property for future mixed-use redevelopment. Supported by state and local funding, these efforts set the foundation for broader waterfront revitalization.
