Wean to restore and occupy downtown Warren building

Staff report

WARREN

The Raymond John Wean Foundation plans to spend $2.5 million to restore and occupy the 17,000-square- foot Market Block Building on Courthouse Square, the foundation announced Thursday.

The work will be complete by this time next year.

The Wean Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to improving the communities and neighborhoods around Youngstown and Warren. It gives $4 million annually in grants to serve as a catalyst for improvements to the community. The building at 147 W. Market St. will serve as the foundation’s headquarters.

The Chesler Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based provider of historic property solutions, will develop and restore the building as part of the Warren-based Wean Foundation’s mission to serve the Mahoning Valley by “helping to foster initiatives that will create a robust civic life and a dynamic and diversified economy with a good range of jobs and safe and attractive neighborhoods,” a press release said.

The building was bought by Warren Redevelopment and Planning Corp. in 2008 as part of the city’s revitalization strategy. The negotiated sale and development agreement with Chesler fits with the city’s 2009 Strategic Plan, which calls for historic preservation of older, historically significant buildings, the foundation said.

Mayor Michael O’Brien said he believes the project will “provide the critical mass necessary to move the economics of the Square into a growth pattern for many years to come.”

The building will also provide community space with a 120-seat meeting room, and incubator-office space for non-profit programs in the Warren area.

The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and the Eastern Ohio P-16 Partnership for Education both currently occupy space within the foundation’s offices on Main Avenue Southwest, and this project will allow the foundation to expand this type of support to other nonprofits in their early stages of development, the foundation said.

Gordon Wean, chairman of the Wean Board of Directors, said, “With this project we will be able to create a place for the foundation to do its work, the community to meet and new non-profit organizations to develop.”

The Market Block Building is directly across from the main entrance of the Trumbull County Courthouse. It’s been vacant since the Trumbull County Department of Job and Family Services moved its One-Stop jobs office from there to the new JFS building on North Park Avenue several years ago.