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Contract awarded for renovations at Oakhill
The architects want renovations with minimum disruption, administrator explains.
YOUNGSTOWN — Four Mahoning County government departments are slated to move from the county’s South Side Annex to Oakhill Renaissance Place, ideally by the end of this year, according to an architect planning renovations at Oakhill to accommodate those departments.
The county’s building commission awarded a $177,000 contract Thursday to Murphy Contracting Co. of Youngstown for renovation of the first-floor space at Oak-hill to be occupied by the Veterans Service Commission beginning in early September.
After that, plans call for the county Recycling Division (Green Team) to make the move, followed by the Clerk of Courts’ Auto Title Department and the Board of Elections, said Tracie A. Kaglic, an architect planning renovations to accommodate these agencies.
Kaglic said she is working on final details of the floor plan for the Green Team’s new space.
“There is some movement going on, but, in my opinion, it’s a pretty slow process for the time that we have occupied that facility,” John Paulette of Austintown said of Oakhill at Thursday’s county commissioners’ meeting.
Paulette said the county’s priority should be to move bigger departments, such as the board of elections and the health department to Oakhill to help fill large spaces in the former hospital building.
The elections board will move after this year’s presidential election, probably in December, replied George J. Tablack, county administrator. “We felt it best not to disrupt their business process in a presidential election year,” Tablack explained.
Construction on one floor at Oakhill is being delayed in case the health department, which has its own governing board, decides to move from its quarters in Austintown to Oakhill, Tablack said.
The county’s Department of Job and Family Services moved from rented quarters at Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side to Oakhill last summer.
“The architects want to be prudent in not disrupting the current business process” of JFS as renovations proceed for other departments, Tablack said.
Part of the delay in renovating Oakhill stems from the architects’ need to redesign the renovations after JFS discovered it could use much of the current space configuration and cut its renovation costs from $5 million to $2.5 million, Tablack explained.
“We were in litigation — unnecessary litigation — for one year, which further impeded us from developing that property,” said Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners.
Traficanti was referring to the taxpayers and breach-of-lease lawsuits brought against the county by JFS’ former landlord, the Ohio Valley Mall Co. The taxpayer’s suit sought unsuccessfully to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill.
The county paid OVM $913,590 to settle the breach of lease suit last fall in exchange for OVM’s agreement to drop its appeal of its loss of the taxpayer’s suit.
When the county bought Oak-hill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the summer of 2006, Oakhill already housed the county coroner’s office, which remains there. Oakhill also houses tenants, including the city health department and the Head Start program.
Located at 345 Oak Hill Ave., the 353,000-square-foot Oakhill facility is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.