Wean Foundation showcases $2.5 million renovated building

July 17, 2012 at 7:03p.m.

WARREN

Anyone with an eye for architecture, design or art should make an appointment to visit the Raymond John Wean Foundation’s new offices on West Market Street downtown.

The foundation gave reporters a tour Tuesday and is dedicating the facility at an invitation-only event today.

Free tours are available by calling 330-394-5600 at least two weeks in advance.

It would be easy to gaze a long time from inside an eye-pleasing second-floor meeting room through three arched windows that look squarely across Courthouse Square at the historic Trumbull County Courthouse.

For those with more modernist tendencies, there’s the bottom floor, where two-inch thick exposed beams and exposed limestone-and-mortar walls dating to the Civil War coexist with modern furnishings and office space.

The main floor, where the Trumbull County One-Stop office operated several years ago, was once a department store. Now it’s a meeting room that can accommodate 120 people.

The 10-month, $2.5 million restoration carried out by the Chesler Group of Cleveland provided the philanthropic Raymond John Wean Foundation with office space for its staff, for other nonprofits and for the community.

Gordon B. Wean, chairman of the board and a third-generation descendent of Raymond John Wean, seemed especially excited about the 6,000-square foot bottom level, where six offices are available for start-up nonprofits.

One of the organizations that enjoyed the foundation’s help to start up in recent years, the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, already has moved into two of the offices.

Officials with the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center will use office space here while its offices are being renovated at another West Market Street store front nearby, Wean said.