CVS detention pond raises city concerns

YOUNGSTOWN — The city’s engineering department approved building a water detention pond a few feet from the sidewalk along Fifth Avenue, where a CVS store is being built.

The engineering department can require the pond to be built to control potential flooding on the property.

But it overstepped its authority by not requiring Orion Development, the project’s developer, to get that location first approved by the city’s design review committee, said Bill D’Avignon, that committee’s chairman and head of the city’s community development agency.

“The committee would never approve that,” D’Avignon said of the pond location, and size. The pond, still under construction, is to be 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and six feet deep.

What makes the approval of the pond ironic is the person who signed off on it is Charles T. Shasho, the city’s public works deputy director and a member of the design review committee.

There are two key issues with the pond’s location: safety and aesthetics, D’Avignon said.

“It’s only a couple of feet from the sidewalk and it’s six feet deep,” he said.

D’Avignon said he spoke today to an Orion official who told him if the city recommended a smaller pond be built the company wouldn’t object.

For the complete story, read Thursday’s Vindicator or Vindy.com