McKelvey should ask president to help

It was a public admission that put the so-called arena project in perspective as no other statement from Mayor George M. McKelvey has done. McKelvey was a guest Monday on Dan Rivers' radio talk show on WKBN when the conversation turned to the proposed convocation/community center for downtown Youngstown.
Rivers had made reference to last Sunday's column in this space headlined, "An arena in Y'town doomed to fail." The talk show host asked the mayor what he thought of that assessment. After some discussion about what has transpired since the city received a $26.8 million federal grant almost three years through the sole effort of then Congressman James A. Traficant Jr., McKelvey said, "If I could spend the money on Federal Street, I would."
Why is that statement significant? Because it is an acknowledgment that a sports arena being pushed by members of city council -- it is greatly reduced in scope from that envisioned by Traficant when he secured the federal grant -- is not the best use of the $26.8 million. By talking about Federal Street, McKelvey was confirming what many who have been involved in the effort to revitalize downtown Youngstown have known: There is a desperate need to not only restore two-way traffic to the main thoroughfare through the center, but also to clean up the area by tearing down dilapidated buildings.
Danger
A story in Wednesday's Vindicator illustrates the extent of the problem. There are seven buildings that a structural engineer declared in 2000 to be in danger of collapse, and the cost of demolishing them has been pegged at between $2 million and $4 million.
Councilman Artis Gillam, D-1st, a member of the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corporation, a quasi-public entity that is guiding the redevelopment of the central business district, said that neither demolition nor renovation will occur anytime soon because city government doesn't have the money, and no one in the private sector has stepped forward to take the initiative.
It is worth noting that Gillam is one of the leading proponents of a sports arena downtown and traveled to Texas to look at a facility he believes should be replicated in Youngstown.
It is true that the federal grant secured by Traficant specifies that it would be used to construct a convocation/community center and that the former congressman had included a sports arena for minor league hockey and football in the definition of the project. It is also true that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is administering the grant, has made it clear that the money cannot be used for anything else. But HUD has also acknowledged that a convocation/community center is not narrowly defined in the legislation.
The project Traficant had in mind carried a price well above the $26.8 million federal grant, which necessitated private sector involvement. Traficant was convinced that an 8,000- to 10,000-seat sports area was essential to attract the kinds of teams and other entertainment that would ensure a positive revenue stream, and he also insisted that any developer would have to facilitate the construction of a 150-bed hotel.
He also was of the strong opinion that the arena and the hotel should be built on the West End of downtown and not on land between the Market Street and South Avenue bridges.
But that's exactly what council and the administration have in mind. The city has already spent $1.8 million for the land and other related items. And, the sports arena now being pushed by council would contain only 5,400 seats and would be paid for entirely with public dollars -- the federal grant. The $26.8 million is being squandered.
White House
So what should the mayor do to ensure that Youngstown gets the biggest bang for the federal bucks? He should take President Bush up on his invitation to visit the White House and seek the administration's help in persuading the Republican leadership in Congress to reprogram the money so it can be used for general downtown redevelopment. Bush's intervention would ensure that the money would remain in Youngstown's hands. A call from him to congressional leaders would protect the grant from being stolen by other members of Congress.
McKelvey should not waste any time in trying to create a flawed diamond in the downtown rough. Rather he should use his personal relationship with the president and with Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, also a Republican, to get Congress to give the city flexibility is spending the money.