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National City exterior work paves way for removal of scaffolding, $1M upgrade
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END IN SIGHT: Scaffolding in place for more than a year at the National City Bank building in downtown Youngstown will soon be removed as building owner Park South Development Co. LLC plans a $1 million improvement to its exterior.
A city agency wouldn’t approve new bank signs without the exterior work.
YOUNGSTOWN — The scaffolding in front of the downtown National City Bank Building for more than a year will be removed shortly as the structure’s owner will spend more than $1 million to improve the exterior.
The scaffolding was put up on the Wick Avenue side of the building in summer 2008 when two pieces of granite on its exterior fell to the ground. No one was hurt.
Since then, Park South Development Co. LLC, a company that owns the building, had some work done to the exterior to secure the tile, said Anita Atheneos, the company’s Youngstown property manager.
Even so, the scaffolding remains. “We felt it was unsafe,” she said.
The improvement work with construction will start shortly, Atheneos said.
“Competing the facade repairs and removing the scaffolding and sidewalk shed is our top priority at this time,” Atheneos said.
The rush is because the bank and the building are changing names.
PNC Bank purchased National City on Dec. 31, 2008. All National City Bank branches in the Mahoning Valley will be renamed PNC on Nov. 9. Also, the nine-story structure on the corner of Wick Avenue and Commerce Street will be renamed the PNC Bank Building.
A new name means new PNC Bank signs.
It also means the poor condition of the 89-year building’s exterior would result in the rejection by the city’s design review committee to place new signs on the structure.
“We weren’t going to approve the signs,” said Bill D’Avignon, chairman of the committee and director of the city’s community development agency. “We are worried about the condition of the building and whether the signs could be applied in a safe manner. The tiles are glued on. The glue has deteriorated, and there’s potential the tiles can come loose, fall down and squash somebody.”
The committee has jurisdiction over the exterior of buildings in the city’s downtown and surrounding areas.
PNC officials plan to ask the committee at an Oct. 6 meeting to approve the new signs, D’Avignon said.
With Park South’s commitment to fix the building’s exterior, approval of the PNC signs is likely, D’Avignon said.
“Everything will be done in order to restore the PNC/National City Building as the diamond office building in Youngstown once again,” Atheneos wrote in a Wednesday letter to D’Avignon.
The bank takes up more than half of the building’s 24,305 square feet of space, she said.
Park South, based in New York City, purchased the National City Bank Building in February 2005 for $4.5 million.
Park South co-owns about a dozen downtown Youngstown buildings with companies owned by Lou Frangos of Cleveland. The National City Bank Building isn’t one of them.
Those co-owned by the two entities include: Realty Tower Apartments, Wick Building, Erie Terminal, Stambaugh Building, and the First National Bank Tower.
skolnick@vindy.com