Developer abandons student housing plan

By David Skolnick

A local developer is interested in another housing project.

YOUNGSTOWN — A proposed $17 million, 109-unit housing facility, primarily for Youngstown State University students, on the city’s North Side is dead.

Place Properties, a major national developer of student housing, has opted to scrap its plans for its proposed Park Place project.

The Atlanta-based company had an option on property on Fifth Avenue, between Westbound Service Road and Park Avenue, just south of Stambaugh Auditorium.

But the company let that option expire a few weeks ago and has abandoned its plans to build the housing facility.

Place Properties officials couldn’t be reached Thursday to comment on their reason for withdrawing the proposal.

Mayor Jay Williams and William D’Avignon said issues related to delays with a 75-percent, 10-year real property tax abatement from the city, which needed state approval, was the reason for Place Properties project cancellation.

D’Avignon said the city’s economic development office failed to move fast enough on getting the state’s approval for the tax abatement and that’s why Place Properties abandoned the project.

Williams said that’s not the case and that the economic development office was instructed to do all it could as quickly as possible to secure approval from the state for the abatement.

In an Aug. 12 letter to Place Properties, Williams wrote that approval on the tax abatement from the state and city would come by early October.

Place Properties was going to pay the entire cost of the 374-bed project and wanted only a tax abatement — a very reasonable request, D’Avignon said.

Losing this project “sends the wrong message to developers,” he said. “... It’s rare to have these national development corporations come in and make those type of investments.”

The Place Properties proposal drew strong objections from YSU officials who said the location posed a danger to students. While respecting the opinion of YSU officials, Williams said the city wanted the project and he’s disappointed it’s been abandoned.

The property is owned by Select Medical Corp., which purchased it for about $2 million in 2006. The company planned to build a 56-bed, long-term, acute-care facility there. But when St. Elizabeth Health Center starting building a medical campus in Boardman, the company decided to open there, leaving boarded-up vacant houses at the Fifth Avenue site.

Bob Wiley, a broker associate for Coldwell Banker Commercial, who is handling the property sale for Select Medical, said another company has submitted a proposal for the property. There’s an agreement on the price, but the contract’s terms aren’t finalized, he said.

If all goes well, the deal should be done in about a month, Wiley said.

Though declining to say what company was negotiating with Select Medical, Wiley said the proposal “will be a real benefit to the area.” If that deal somehow fails, there are two other companies interested in the site, he said.

D’Avignon said he’s been told a retail store is going to open at that location.

Regardless of what opens there, the boarded-up houses are going to come down shortly, Wiley said.

Specialty will pay for the remediation and demolition, he said. The demolition project should be finished in about a month, he said.

Meanwhile, local developer Dominic Marchionda is planning a $24 million project to turn 751 Elm St., the former Coney Island restaurant and an attached warehouse, into four apartment buildings for student housing.

The four buildings in the city’s Smoky Hollow area would have about 50 units.

Marchionda is asking the city to apply for up to $750,000 in Clean Ohio funding to help with the remediation and demolition costs.

City council has scheduled a special meeting at 3 p.m. today. Applying for the state funds is on the agenda.

The city supports this project as it did the Park Place proposal, Williams said.

Hunter Morrison, YSU’s director of campus planning and community partnerships, said the university has held preliminary discussions with Marchionda.

“Until we see all the details, we can’t commit, but it’s a promising idea from a local developer,” he said.

skolnick@vindy.com