‘This is a palace!’ Tenants sing praises of Mahoning County’s Oakhill Renaissance Place

By Peter H. Milliken

Oakhill Renaissance Place is a work in progress, but it’s already getting rave reviews from Mahoning County officials, their architects and the people who work there.

“It’s a 10 out of 10,” said Barry Landgraver, director of the county’s Veterans’ Service Commission. The commission, which is Oakhill’s newest occupant, opened for business there on Dec. 22 after moving from the county’s South Side Annex at 2801 Market St.

Located at 345 Oak Hill Ave., the five-story, 338,000-square-foot Oakhill Renaissance Place is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.

Saving the complex from abandonment, the county bought the former hospital for $75,000 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, subject to all liens, including back real estate taxes and an Ohio Department of Development loan.

“The facilities are much better and more practical than we had at the annex,” Landgraver said.

He contrasted the commission’s readily handicapped-accessible first floor offices at Oakhill with its second-floor offices in the South Side Annex, which were a long walk from the parking lot.

VSC provides veterans’ benefits counseling, transports veterans to Cleveland-area U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs medical centers and provides temporary emergency cash assistance to needy veterans. Several parking spaces adjacent to Oakhill’s Entrance A, where the commission is located, are reserved for disabled veterans.

The new offices also offer better privacy for veterans than the annex’s high-walled cubicles, Landgraver said.

When they visit the commission, veterans can also obtain birth certificates from the city health department and apply for Job and Family Services assistance because those agencies are also at Oakhill.

“One-stop shopping is going to be great,” Landgraver said, echoing a theme often extolled by county officials and Oakhill tenants.

Not everyone agreed in the beginning that the building purchase was the right move.

Michael V. Sciortino, county auditor; John B. Reardon, who was county treasurer in 2006; and county Commissioner John A. McNally IV opposed the purchase, citing undetermined costs associated with buying, operating and maintaining the former hospital.

When the county bought the building, it already housed the county coroner’s office, the city health department and the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership, (MYCAP), which remain there today.

In July 2007, the county relocated its Department of Job and Family Services to Oakhill from rented quarters at Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side.

The county settled a breach-of-lease lawsuit from the Cafaro Co., JFS’ former landlord at Garland, for $913,590, in exchange for Cafaro’s agreement to drop its appeal of its loss in a taxpayers’ lawsuit, in which the company tried to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill.

“Garland was a zero. This is a 91‚Ñ2 or 93‚Ñ4,” Tim Komara, a case manager at JFS’ Child Support Enforcement Agency, said when he was asked to compare Garland with Oakhill.

“There’s no comparison. This is a palace. It’s beautiful. It’s clean. We have windows. It’s safe,” and centrally located, said Komara, an executive board member of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3577, which represents CSEA workers.

“We have a parking deck. Our cars are safe and out of the elements,” he added.