Candy company owner tempers decision to close skating rink

By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

BOARDMAN — John Giannios won’t be turning a Tiffany Boulevard skating rink into a chocolate factory after all.

When he bought the property a year ago, Giannios intended to spend $2 million to transform the 30,000-square-foot Skate Connection into a space for manufacturing candy.

The new building would have provided the Struthers-based Giannios Candy Co. with a full-scale retail store as well as a place to produce more candy. 

“By the time I changed that building and did what I want with it, I would get a better end result at a better price by building a new one,” said Giannios, president of the candy company.

Giannios has reopened the skating rink, for which he paid $1.1 million, calling it Youngstown Skate.

“Many people thanked me for opening the skating rink back up,” he noted. He hired the former Skate Connection employees to operate the rink.

The rink floor is in excellent shape, Giannios said. Other improvements, mostly cosmetic, are being made little by little. He’s redoing the snack bar, for instance. He also completely replaced the old rental skates with brand new ones.

“We’ve got a whole new attitude over there,” he said. “It’s real nice.

Giannios hasn’t forgotten about his chocolate project, though.

He plans to start work on a 24,000-square-foot retail showplace in the spring. Giannios said he already owns four pieces of property on South Avenue between U.S. Route 224 and Western Reserve Road. He intends to meet with his architect soon to choose the location that will work best for this project.

The new location will allow tours to see how the candy is made, unlike the candy maker’s current plant on Youngstown-Poland Road.

The Struthers plant operates seven days a week and produces 2 million pounds of chocolate a year. Sixty-five people are employed at the plant in the winter, and 40 are employed in the summer when sales are slower.