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Port authority helping Auto Parkit assess and clean up former Delphi site
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
Thanks to the Western Reserve Port Authority, Auto Parkit, the company leasing the former Delphi Packard facilities in Warren, is getting an environmental assessment of those buildings.
It will be complete in early January, Sarah Lown, port authority senior economic-development manager, said at Wednesday’s port authority board meeting. The assessment is being done with $600,000 the port authority acquired from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brownfields grant.
Now the port authority is talking to Jobs Ohio, the state’s top economic-development team, to determine whether it can help with the cost to clean up the site, Lown said.
Lown said Christopher Alan, Auto Parkit owner and a Warren native, remains interested in the concept he discussed in October – moving the company’s manufacturing and warehousing facilities and headquarters to the 500,000-square-foot former Delphi facilities. Auto Parkit is based in Los Angeles.
Alan said during a news conference that getting government help to clean up the site would be among the factors that will determine whether he moves forward with the project. Some of the other factors are financing and re-establishing rail access.
Alan also has discussed his desire to help regrow downtown Warren by offering incentives to his employees to live downtown, Lown said.
In other business, the economic-development division of the port authority has hired Farris Marketing of Youngstown at a cost of $20,000 to help the staff promote its product.
The port authority’s economic-development division has been in existence about six years but recently expanded to have a director and program/communications manager, in addition to the port authority’s executive director and Lown.
Farris provides similar services for numerous Mahoning Valley organizations, such as Vallourec Star, the Mahoning County Green Team, Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp., Rescue Mission, Mill Creek MetroParks and Canfield Fair.
Meanwhile, Dan Dickten, aviation director for the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, which is run by the port authority, said the airline hoping to begin daily flights between Youngstown and Chicago O’Hare International is not concerned about a complaint voiced to the U.S. Department of Transportation about the airline.
Mickey Bowman, vice president of Aerodynamics Inc., told Dickten the objection raised by James Paquette and Via Airlines Inc. regarding $400,000 ADI owes to Paquette “won’t be an obstacle” to getting final approval of the flights, Dickten said.
Paquette wrote to the DOT, asking it to deny ADI certification to start the flights because of the money.
Dickten said if the final DOT approval comes later this month, startup of the service would be in mid-March. ADI still has several days to respond to Paquette’s objection.
Dickten said he also has learned the airport has been approved by the U.S. Customs & Border Patrol Office to have a customs office. Having the office will allow travelers on international flights returning to the Youngstown/Warren area to clear customs at the local airport.
Dickten said the office can begin operations after the airport provides a facility to house it. He’s looking into whether a trailer can be used temporarily to get it started right away.