Crews take wrecking ball to former St. Joseph Hospital parking garage in Lorain

The last remaining pieces of St. Joseph Hospital in Lorain are meeting with the wrecking ball.After years of stops and starts and legal wrangling, a wrecking ball took its first swings Thursday at the former St. Joseph Hospital parking garage at West 21st Street and Broadway in Lorain. The seven-story parking garage is the last and largest structure left on the hospital grounds. Demolition is expected to take up to three weeks. Final cleanup is not expected to be done until sometime next year, city officials have said. The city Engineer's Office announced Thursday that Reid Avenue, from West 20th Street to West 21st Street, will be closed to all traffic on Monday for 14 to 21 days for those purposes. St. Joseph Hospital closed in 1997. Lorain City Council voted Sept. 7 to seek bids to demolish what remains at the site. Final demolition and site cleanup and preparation for new development has been budgeted at just over $4.1 million, paid for with a Brownfield Remediation Grant from the Ohio Department of Development. It isn't known what will be built on the site or by whom, whether a city project or a private project. Lorain city and Lorain County officials fought for years to gain access to the property. Much of it sat vacant for more than a decade before it was demolished. Further demolition was halted in 2021 after a contractor tied to a former owner failed to get the right permits. The property was foreclosed on in 2025 after a different former owner failed to pay more than $1.7 million in delinquent real estate taxes and assessments. The original St. Joseph Hospital started in a house in 1892, serving children in the city who needed immediate surgery.