New lounge set for downtown

By Karl Henkel | June 25, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

A new lounge is coming to downtown Youngstown as soon as this fall.

SKA Limited, LLC announced Friday plans to open its third downtown project sometime in September or October.

The yet-to-be-named lounge will target young to middle-aged professionals and will be in a familiar spot.

SKA says it will take over the second floor of the property at 124 Federal Plaza West. The first floor is occupied by Imbibe Martini Bar, an SKA project that celebrated its sixth anniversary June 18.

Jeff Kurz, president of SKA and a Cardinal Mooney High School graduate, said the new lounge will be “a little more upbeat than Imbibe” and feature a dance area, two lounge sections and possibly a private room for special events.

SKA will submit updated drawings of the establishment to the city Monday; it originally had submitted plans in 2005 before it took on its other downtown project, The Lemon Grove.

Kurz said the demolition work already has been done on the second floor, so the rebuilding process shouldn’t be tedious.

“This can all be done in a few months,” he said.

The establishment doesn’t have a name yet, but Kurz said there may be a name-suggestion contest, though nothing is set in stone.

Imbibe was a name thought up by an aerospace engineer from Washington who happened to be in the Youngstown area at the time and heard about the contest on the radio.

Kurz didn’t know exactly how many jobs would be created but estimated it could be around 10.

He said the need for a lounge stems from new downtown housing developments.

“The people of this area have shown that they are going to support downtown Youngstown,” Kurz said. “This is our way of saying, ‘We believe in you like you believed in us.’”