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Authorities close tavern
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NO TRESPASSING: The Riverbend Tavern, 1105 Poland Ave., Youngstown, will remain boarded up for at least 30 more days and possibly as long as a year. It was raided Nov. 5 on suspicion of drug trafficking and illegal gambling.
YOUNGSTOWN — With three legal actions pending against the establishment and its owners, the Riverbend Tavern and the gambling and drug activities that occurred there have been put out of business, the city prosecutor said.
“Problem solved. The Riverbend is no more,” Jay Macejko, the city prosecutor, said Wednesday. “Effectively, this business and its illegal operations have been closed. It’s over.”
In the first legal action, Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court issued a foreclosure judgment Oct. 22 against the tavern and in favor of Geauga Savings Bank, which is owed $90,331 on the tavern’s mortgage, Macejko noted.
The bank owns the tavern, and that case will proceed to appraisal and a sheriff’s sale, he added.
The second legal action is Macejko’s civil-nuisance complaint against the tavern, in which he obtained a temporary restraining order from Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of the same court to board up the bar Nov. 5.
Also on Nov. 5, the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force raided the bar on suspicion of drug trafficking and illegal gambling. Police seized suspected illegal drugs and video-gambling machines in that raid, said Lt. Robin Lees, task-force commander.
The Riverbend, located at 1105 Poland Ave., will remain boarded up for at least 30 more days, and possibly for a year, Macejko said.
The third legal action consists of criminal charges of operating a gambling house and possession of criminal tools, namely the video- gambling machines from which payouts were reportedly secured by undercover officers.
Those first-degree misdemeanor charges are pending in Youngstown Municipal Court against bar owner John Messer, 58, of Raccoon Road, and former building owner Larry F. Meenachan, 59, of Baymar Drive.
In his request for the restraining order, Macejko said an undercover informant made 13 controlled purchases of suspected crack cocaine and prescription pills at the bar within the past four months.
Macejko said he expects felony drug-trafficking charges also will be filed.
Messer agreed not to contest any of Macejko’s public-nuisance allegations concerning the bar. Messer and his lawyer, Dennis DiMartino, declined to comment.
A hearing on whether to extend Judge Krichbaum’s board-up order that was scheduled Wednesday before Magistrate Timothy G. Welsh was postponed until 10:30 a.m. Dec. 18.
The hearing was postponed because there was no proof that the bank or Meenachan and his wife, Sherrill, the building’s former co-owners, had been served with a notice of Wednesday’s hearing.
Neither the Meenachans, nor their lawyer, nor any bank representatives appeared in court.
milliken@vindy.com