YSU trustees back plan for inn to become a conference center

The Wick-Pollock option might cost $4.4 million.

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — The Wick-Pollock Inn would be converted into a university conference center with up to 11 guest rooms under a plan favored by Youngstown State University’s board of trustees.

The board’s Finance and Facilities Committee, with all but two trustees present, voted Friday to endorse that plan that carries a $4.39 million price tag.

It was one of five options presented to the committee by the university administration.

Those options ranged from converting the inn to a bed and breakfast to making it a university alumni and advancement center to bringing in an outside management team to turn it into a 51-bed boutique hotel.

Boutique hotels are small, usually luxurious hotels complete with some theme but not affiliated with a chain.

Costs ranged from $4.15 million for the bed and breakfast concept to just over $11 million for the boutique hotel.

The trustees already have earmarked $3.95 million for renovation of the inn at 603 Wick Ave. as part of a $20 million bond issue the university plans to borrow in early 2010.

The inn, built as a private residence in the 1890s, has been vacant since 1998, and getting it restored and reopened in some fashion has been a goal of President David C. Sweet since he came to YSU in 2000.

Hunter Morrison, YSU director of campus planning and community partnerships, told the trustees that action needs to be taken soon if the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is to be preserved.

All the renovation options involve the removal of the 60-room hotel wing added to the structure in 1980, he said.

Morrison said the conference-center option is “a prudent alternative” that could allow a design that would enable a conversion to a boutique hotel when market conditions for that type of facility are more favorable.

Trustee Carole Weimer said she found the boutique-hotel concept interesting, but she has concerns about the cost as well as the ongoing need for a 51-bed hotel.

Trustee Harry Meshel said he wasn’t interested in the hotel as it might impose some long-term financial burden on the university. He said he favored either the university conference center or alumni and advancement center.

Trustees Larry DeJane, Dr. Sudershan Garg, Daniel DeMaiolo, John Jakubek and Scott Schulick all agreed the conference center is the best approach to preserving the inn, and the committee voted unanimously to adopt that plan.

Schulick urged the administration to move quickly in preparing to hire an architect and get design work in place to present to the trustees in December.

gwin@vindy.com