RELATED: Canfield trustees move forward with ABC

By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

AUSTINTOWN

The Mahoning County Planning Commission approved the rezoning of 18.58 acres in Canfield Township from single-family residential to business to enable construction of a new Windsor House nursing home along state Route 446 adjacent to the Mill Creek MetroParks Farm.

The rezoning proposal now goes before the township zoning commission and trustees.

Windsor plans to build a 72-bed nursing home, which would employ between 72 and 80 people, said John P. Daliman, general counsel for the Girard-based nursing- home chain.

Windsor hopes to begin building the new facility this year and complete it next year, he said.

“This will provide a new economic stimulus to the entire county as well as the township of Canfield,” Daliman told the commission Tuesday.

Greg Brooks, Windsor House development director, said the new facility would cost between $8 million and $10 million to build.

Dave Morrison, township zoning inspector, said his office does not object to the zone change.

Canfield city and township officials are negotiating concerning sharing tax revenue and costs of police and fire protection and road maintenance for the site and how water and sanitary sewer service is to be provided to it.

Earlier this year, Joseph Warino, city manager, said city policy was to provide water and sanitary-sewer service to a site only if it is annexed to the city, but county commissioners rejected annexing the proposed nursing home site to the city.

It would be difficult to get a state license to operate the nursing home without a public water supply and sanitary-sewer service, Daliman said.

Combined real-estate taxes and city income tax to be paid by nursing home employees would total between $250,000 and $300,000 a year, Daliman said.

In other business, the commission approved a request from Michael P. Kurilla Jr., Milton Township zoning inspector, to rezone 398 Lake Milton shore-front lots from regular single-family residential to a newly created lakefront residential district.

In the lakefront residential district, sheds and detached garages are to be between the houses and the road, and not between the houses and the lake, so they don’t obstruct the lake view of lakefront dwellers.

Of the 398 lots, 235 are on the east shore of the lake and 163 are on the west shore.