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Plan for Vegas-style complex OK'd
The CEO wants to bring Vegas-style entertainment to his complex, which will be located near a proposed casino and racetrack in Lawrence County.
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — A $7 million truck terminal, hotel and entertainment complex is being planned for U.S. Route 422 a mile and a quarter east of the planned Centaur Racetrack development. The complex is expected eventually to employ 150 to 200.
Union Township’s Planning Board unanimously approved a variance Monday that will allow developers Andrew and Linda Menichino and their business, Innovative Associates Inc., to develop 15.73 acres on the south side of the road on the site of the former Holiday Inn building, which was later used as the Calvary Temple church.
The Menichinos bought the church property last year. Andrew Menichino told the board he plans to level a hill behind the building. He said he also has under contract 11 additional acres behind the property.
Menichino, who is CEO of the business, said he plans to develop a Hampton Inn-type hotel, a five-star restaurant and bar with seating for 800 that would bring in Las Vegas-type entertainment, a separate 24-hour New York-style deli, retail stores, a spa, arcade and truck terminal at the site.
Menichino and his attorney, Don Nicolls, told the zoning board that even though the site is zoned light industrial — which would allow a truck terminal — it should also allow him to include the restaurants and hotel, retail stores, spa and arcade because these type businesses are included in other truck terminals in the region.
Township Solicitor Jason Medure said the supervisors have no objection to the development because they are already reworking the township zoning ordinance in light of the proposed racetrack and casino complex in Mahoning Township.
He said that under the new ordinance, Menichino’s development would be a conforming use and not require a variance.
Menichino said after the meeting that he expects the first phase to be completed in six months and to include remodeling the former Holiday Inn building to make an 18-room hotel, and construction of a banquet facility, arcade, fuel facility and spa.
Depending on several factors, he plans to then expand the hotel by 88 rooms, and possibly eventually by 100 more.
He said he would absolutely go ahead with the whole complex even if the Centaur track doesn’t open. He said there are few hotels in this area and that hotels in a 30- to 40-mile radius of the site are booked 90 percent all the time. He said his Las Vegas-style entertainment would “hold its own” because there’s nothing like it around here. He also said there is no truck stop in this area
He told Zoning Board Chairman John Mrozek he hopes to hook into a never-used sanitary sewer line that runs along the property. But this would depend on the township’s upgrading a deteriorated pump house before he could connect.
Alternatively, he said he could use a septic tank storage system that had been used by Calvary Temple and is big enough to handle the 88 hotel units.
No one objected to the development, although the owner of a nearby trailer court questioned the facility’s impact on a one-way street out of the court onto Route 422. The board told her that this is a matter that should be presented to township supervisors.
Menichino is a New Castle native who now lives in Greenville. He runs a construction business and formerly had a paving business.
Zoning Board Solicitor Thomas Leslie said Menichino must now wait 30 days to see if any appeal is filed to the variance before a building permit is issued.