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Antone’s proposes cafeteria, food-service center at Oakhill
YOUNGSTOWN
A local banquet-hall operator proposes to use the food-service facilities at Oakhill Renaissance Place as a central kitchen to prepare lunches for area schoolchildren and as a cafeteria to serve breakfast and lunch to Oakhill workers and visitors.
Ross Scianna, president of Antone’s Banquet Center in Boardman, where the school food is now prepared, made the proposal Thursday to the Mahoning County Building Commission.
Scianna said his operation served more than 1,000 children daily in the 2010-2011 school year ending this month and expects that to grow to 5,000 next school year. “We need a larger facility than what we have,” he told the commission.
The operation would bring 50 jobs to Oakhill in its first year there, growing to at least 100 jobs in its second and third years, he said.
“It’s all local. All the money stays in the [Mahoning] Valley. The money that stays in the Valley is spent in the Valley,” he said of his operation.
The commission took his proposal under advisement and voted to prepare specifications to advertise for bids for the use of Oakhill’s food service area.
The county-owned Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which now houses the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, coroner’s office, veterans’ service commission and recycling division, the city health department and the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership.
The recycling division moved Tuesday from the county’s South Side Annex to Oakhill, and the county’s board of elections hopes to move from the annex to Oakhill by the end of this month, said Tracie Kaglic, project manager for Oakhill renovations at Olsavsky-Jaminet Architects.
Renovations for the board of elections’ Oak- hill quarters were completed entirely by county facilities department employees.
Still to move from the annex to Oakhill are the county clerk of court’s auto title division and the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force.
Supervisory FBI Agent Jon M. Holloway told the commission he will apply for federal money to go toward renovations for task force quarters at Oakhill, which the force would occupy rent-free. The FBI is a participant in the task force, which occupies its annex quarters rent-free.
The county health department’s adult day-care center will move from the annex, either to Oakhill or to the Austintown Senior Center, Kaglic said.
The commission also voted to advertise for bids to replace about 40,000 square feet of roof at Oakhill.
Robert E. Bush Jr., county JFS director, said air conditioning began functioning June 9 in most parts of Oakhill that had been without it because of rain that delayed the pouring of a new concrete cooling-tower pad for the air-conditioning system.
Air conditioning is now functioning in 90 percent of Oakhill, with some duct work remaining to be installed, he said.
Usable space in the former hospital is now 52 percent occupied, with 48 percent still available, Kagic told the commission.