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Plans for new Liberty hotel advance
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County commissioners approved a resolution Wednesday accepting an application by a Hubbard company for a 49 percent, 10-year real-estate tax exemption for a $6.5 million hotel on Belmont Avenue in Liberty.
It will be a couple of months before Liberty Township, the county commissioners and Ohio Developmental Services Agency will be able to approve the application.
The company, Perni and Perni Equities LLC, has a target of March 2014 for construction to begin and March 2015 for it to be complete, said Dave Dubiaga, community planning director for Trumbull County.
Dubiaga, who works for the county’s planning commission, said he will notify the Liberty school board about the proposal, and Liberty Township officials will have a hearing on the proposal in several weeks.
If approval from the township and county are obtained, the Developmental Services Agency could give the final go-ahead in a couple of months, Dubiaga said.
The 90-unit Comfort Suites is planned for the location where a Ramada Inn once stood. Dubiaga’s contact person for the project, Youngstown anesthesiologist Dr. Veeraiah Perni, could not be reached Wednesday to comment.
The hotel would employ 15 full-time workers and 12 part-timers, Dubiaga said.
Representatives for local labor organizations attended Wednesday’s commissioners’ meeting to voice their hopes that the owners of the project will use local tradesmen during the construction.
“I hope the owner sees it to hire locally,” said Mike Rapovy of the Boardman office of the Council of Carpenters.
“Most of the hotels going up now are being built by nonlocal workers.”
Similar remarks were made by representatives from the painter’s union and from the laborer’s union.
“We just want local people from Trumbull and Mahoning counties to do the work,” said Jody Stringer, business manager of the Laborer’s International Union of North America office in Warren.
In other business, the commissioners approved a unique agreement between them and Brentwood Mobile Home Manor on DeForest Road in Howland to help the park provide sewers to its residents.
The agreement allows the park to pay the $182,900 cost to connect each home through a payment plan of $3,048 per month for 60 months.
The former owner of the park died, leaving two children in charge, and they are trying to sell it, said Commissioner Frank Fuda.
The agreement will be transferable if the park is sold, and it will prevent the possibility that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency might force the park’s residents to move out for failing to connect to the sewer system, Fuda said.
Commissioners also gave the Trumbull County Treasurer’s Office and Trumbull County Land Bank permission to collect an additional 21/2 percent of the fees associated with delinquent property taxes to be available to fund Land Bank activities.
The Land Bank contributed $180,000 in matching money toward the Moving Ohio Forward project responsible for demolishing hundreds of homes in Trumbull County in recent months, and the Land Bank will also contribute matching money to another demolition program the county is hoping to use, said Sam Lamancusa, Trumbull County treasurer and president of the Land Bank.
The Land Bank, which was created in February 2011, has helped people acquire side lots near their homes as a result of housing demolitions. The Land Bank started out receiving 21/2 percent of the fees to get started but needs the other 21/2 percent — the maximum permitted by law — now that it is working successfully, Lamancusa said.