Saturday, September 21, 2013
youngstown
Vallourec Star has purchased the former Genmak Steel building at 1053 Ohio Works Drive for $2.5 million, according to documents filed with the Mahoning County Auditor’s Office.
The 70,000-square-foot building, built in 2003 for the leveling and cutting of steel coil and storage, has been empty for years now, said David Bozanich, Youngstown’s finance director.
At a board of control meeting Thursday, the city granted Vallourec Star’s request to transfer an environmental warranty to the company. The warranty is a commonplace document that the city issues after it restores a Brownfield site to guarantee the environmental restoration work, which was done there more than a decade ago.
“Vallourec is buying the Genmak property, and they wanted to extend that environmental warranty,” Bozanich said. “They haven’t announced a use for it yet but, for corporate planning purposes, they wanted to get these things taken care of.”
Documents with the Mahoning County Auditor’s Office show that Gensamer Family Partners Inc. sold the property. Genmak’s Youngstown property was built in 2003 by William L. Gensamer, who owned and operated the company. At the time, the company was expanding, and it moved its operations from Sharon, Pa., to the city.
In June, when Vallourec officials traveled to Youngstown for a dedication ceremony at its new $1 billion seamless pipe mill, they said expansion likely would continue at the facility just off U.S. Route 422 and other points nearby.
When Gensamer built the facility on Ohio Works Drive, he invested $3 million worth of equipment there, including a pair of 30-ton cranes and three 10-ton cranes. But whether those remain inside the facility remains unclear, and a spokesman for Vallourec could not be reached to comment late Friday.
Vallourec Star makes steel pipe in Youngstown for the oil and gas industry.