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Legal Arts Building project downtown will have to wait until at least 2017
YOUNGSTOWN
The Legal Arts Building, a downtown office structure vacant for the past 11 years, may have a tenant in the next six months.
But any plans to develop it won’t begin until at least 2017.
Also, a development project would happen only if the NYO Property Group, which owns the building, gets federal and state historic tax credits, said Dominic J. Marchionda, the company’s managing member.
“We’re getting the trash out of it and continuing to clean it up,” he said. “We’re protecting the building for future development.”
The four-story structure with a rear enclosed parking area sustained water damage from a broken roof drain earlier this year, Marchionda said.
“The first-floor space just needs minor work and some updating,” he said. “Someone wants to move in there [on the first floor], but I can’t discuss that yet as it’s not finalized.”
Legal Arts, at 101 Market St., was built for $2 million in 1965 primarily for legal offices as it’s across the street from the county courthouse on the site of the former Sears Roebuck building.
It changed owners several times during the 1970s and 1980s.
The ground floor used to house The Hub, a breakfast and lunch diner that closed in early 2004. A few months later, an acetylene tank at a jewelry repair shop exploded, causing damage to the building.
When improvement work wasn’t done, the few remaining tenants left in late 2004.
Marchionda bought the building in March 2012 for $175,000.
A delay in renovating Legal Arts isn’t just about getting federal and state tax credits, it’s also that NYO Property Group is focused on other projects that have already received federal and state historic tax credits.
NYO is in the final stages of a $15 million, two-year project converting the vacant Wick Tower into a 52-unit rental and extended-stay living facility with the latter rented for short periods to those conducting business in the area.
Of the 30 apartments, 28 already are rented with several of them moved in to the 105-year-old building at 34 W. Federal St., Marchionda said.
“Wick is 95-percent complete,” he said.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be at 2 p.m. Sept. 23.
That project is receiving about $6.7 million in federal and state tax credits.
Once Wick is done, NYO will focus on its largest and most-expensive project: converting the near-vacant Stambaugh Building, 44 E. Federal St., into a $25.5 million, 120-room DoubleTree Hotel. It will include a restaurant and a banquet facility.
“After Wick, our top priority is the Stambaugh hotel and that will start in the next couple of months,” Marchionda said.
“Stambaugh is a 14-month project.”
The project at the 108-year-old building is receiving $9 million in federal and state tax credits – the most given to any historic structure in the Mahoning Valley from those programs.
NYO is one of downtown’s main property owners.
The company also owns Realty Tower, Erie Terminal Place, the Flats at Wick, the Harshman Building, 16 Wick, the Metropolitan Savings and Loan, and the former St. Vincent De Paul building.
Marchionda said the company is talking to a business that wants to open a sports bar at one of its properties downtown and to another business that wants to open a coffee shop downtown.
He declined to give specifics of either proposal.
T. Sharon Woodberry, director of the city’s community planning and economic development department, said, “NYO has been successful with their projects. They always engage the city about their projects and we’re excited about the next project – the Stambaugh hotel project.”
She said the city understands it’s going to be a while before the Legal Arts project will be done, and the city is making sure it remains in compliance with building codes.