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Golden String will open Oakhill cafe
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Tim Gilboy, center, cuts the ribbon held by fellow employees of Gallagher’s Lunch Bucket on Monday in the former hospital cafeteria at Oakhill Renaissance Place on Youngstown’s South Side. The cafe will begin serving breakfast and lunch on weekdays later this month.
YOUNGSTOWN
A ceremonial opening of a cafe in the ground-floor cafeteria area at Oakhill Renaissance Place occurred Monday after 15 years of dormancy at the food-service facility.
When it opens for business later this month, 35 disabled adult clients of the nonprofit Golden String Inc. will be employed in the cafe, known as “Gallagher’s Lunch Bucket,” which will serve breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday.
The cafe will open as soon as some needed refrigeration equipment arrives and the city health department issues it an operating license, said James F. Sutman, Golden String’s director of operations.
The cafe, which will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., is named for the late Joe Gallagher, Golden String’s first client during the mid-1990s.
Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, 345 Oak Hill Ave., which the county bought in 2006 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for use as a county office complex. The cafe, managed by Sutman’s wife, Jill, is at Entrance A of the complex.
Golden String clients and staff and city and county officials attended the ceremony, during which Tim Gilboy, a Golden String client, cut the ribbon with giant scissors.
“When we inherited this space, it was not just dusty,
but old and dirty. It was basically a storage room for a lot of the agencies here,” Sutman said. County facilities workers installed a new ceiling and lighting fixtures.
“I’m hoping that it breathes some more life into the building,” Sutman said of the cafe.
Installation of an outdoor patio for the cafe is planned for a later date, he added.
Sutman said he hopes Golden String clients can soon begin delivering food to offices within Oakhill.
Golden String opened a “Touch the Moon” candy stand on the ground floor of the former hospital a month ago.
“This is one of the most-rewarding things I have done as a commissioner,” said County Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti. “Our building will accept this well.”
“They’re putting people that are disabled to work, and they’re also providing a service” for Oakhill’s workers, said Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st. Oak-hill is in the councilwoman’s ward.
The cafe is convenient for workers who don’t have time to leave the premises because they only have a 30-minute lunch period.
Some 500 people are employed in county offices and tenant agencies at Oakhill.
Oakhill houses the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, Veterans’ Service Commission, board of elections, auto-title department, recycling division and coroner’s office.
The city health department, the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership and the Ursuline Sisters’ Comprehensive Care Clinic are tenants in the former hospital.
Golden String Inc., which will operate the cafe under a five-year contract, spent about $100,000 to renovate its space and to buy new equipment that was needed to supplement usable equipment left over from the hospital cafeteria days.
Golden String will begin paying $2,000 a month in rent to the county once the renovation and equipment costs are paid off in about two years.
Olsavsky-Jaminet Architects Inc. donated about $25,000 worth of design services for the project, and renovation contractors discounted their services.
Golden String, which is using only about 25 percent of the former hospital kitchen’s capacity, is paying for its own separately metered gas, with a separate electricity and water-metering arrangement still to be worked out.
Upon entering the cafe, visitors will notice an unusual item of decor — a 1930s vintage soda fountain that had been at Ray’s Drug Store on Market Street in Boardman.