43
Flood-prone four-plex to be razed
YOUNGSTOWN
Commissioners of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority voted to demolish a 1965-vintage building containing four apartments at the authority’s Kirwan Homes in Campbell.
The building, known as Building 22, is on Murray Avenue and has been vacant for several years.
The commissioners authorized the demolition Tuesday because the building is in a low, flood-prone location on a hillside, said Lester Walker, YMHA project manager.
“We just can’t keep tenants in and keep water out,” he said. “We’re going to take it down and just make it into a green space.”
Kirwan, which is named for the late, longtime Mahoning Valley U.S. Rep. Michael Kirwan, has 31 buildings, each with four apartments.
Also awaiting demolition are eight apartments in two 1965-vintage buildings at Victory Estates, whose demolition was earlier approved by YMHA commissioners and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Victory buildings on Youngstown’s East Side will be razed because they are dilapidated and there is no demand for the apartments there, which contain four or more bedrooms, Walker said.
An explosion blew out some of the walls in one of the Victory buildings to be razed when someone stole a natural-gas-fired hot water tank from that vacant building, Walker said.
“We’ll be soliciting for one contractor to demolish the units at both developments,” said Danielle L. Mulligan, the authority’s planning and development director.
“We feel we’ll probably get a better price if we do them together, rather than separately,” added Carmelita Douglas, authority executive director.
The commissioners also voted to apply to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to sell 45 to 50 of its older scattered-site, low-income housing apartments and replace them with a $7 million, 45- to 50-apartment senior-citizen complex to be built at a still-to-be-determined location outside of Youngstown.
“There’s a need for more units for low-income seniors,” Mulligan said.