Eyesore at edge of Newport district to be rehabilitated

Work to repair the building began but stopped in 2005 over an ownership dispute.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

BOARDMAN — A longtime eyesore at the gateway to the township’s historic district will have a new look in about three months.

Butler Wick Trust Co., the administrator of the estate of William A. Busch, the building’s former owner, sold the 12-plex at 4250 Hillman Way to LTD Investments LLC for $172,000 earlier this month.

LTD is the investment company of Sherry DeMar, who operates both a real estate agency and a property management company.

“I’m going to finish what we started, which was rehabbing it,” DeMar said.

Her property management company had been hired by Butler Wick, she said, to make repairs to the building. After spending about $100,000 from the estate to complete six units and securing tenants for those units, the probate court stopped the work on the building in 2005, telling the trust company to stop spending Busch’s money.

Former Probate Judge Timothy P. Maloney referred in his order to a 2004 deed that indicated Busch had transferred the property to a Youngstown man. The judge later ordered the deed void.

Busch, a regular attendee at political events throughout Mahoning County, had lived in the Hillman Way building before moving into a nursing home. He died in July 2006 leaving no surviving relatives.

The building has deteriorated since the initial work and was boarded up last summer to prevent vandals from getting in and causing additional damage.

Late last year, the probate court authorized the estate to sell the building and last month, Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who presides over a separate case involving Busch’s estate, approved a motion to sell the building for $172,000, the appraised value. The money is to be placed in escrow.

DeMar said when Butler Wick was allowed to sell it, she decided to buy it.

She expects to have work done on the building in about 90 days and have tenants living there.

“It’s going to be a nice place in Boardman instead of an eyesore in Boardman,” DeMar said.

That’s good news to some who live in the neighborhood and have attended township trustee meetings in the past to complain about the building. It sits at Hillman Way and Overhill Road, near the entrance of the township’s historic district consisting of older, upscale and well-maintained homes.

The Newport Village Allotment Historic District was entered in the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior in June 2006.

“I’m glad that she bought it and she’s going to work on it and finish it,” said Judith Kuti, who lives on Jennette Drive within the district.

The boarded-up apartment building detracted from the rest of the neighborhood, she said.

“I think it’s going to be a lot better for people driving through to see a nice, shining, bright building with people living there,” Kuti said. “I’m thrilled.”