Plasma Center leaves Youngstown for Austintown Plaza ; another plasma center to open in Youngstown space


By ROBERT CONNELLY

rconnelly@vindy.com

AUSTINTOWN

A plasma center has been open in Austintown Plaza, 6000 Mahoning Ave., for about two weeks now after relocating from its Youngstown location.

That move was not known by Youngstown officials until a Vindicator reporter asked about the move.

T. Sharon Woodberry, city director of community planning and economic development, recalled that Biotest Plasma Center had conversations in 2011 about wanting to do things with its building, 444 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

“We did have conversations with the owner of the building and ... they were looking at making some improvements at the site, and that didn’t go forward,” Woodberry said.

Dan Gamache, Biotest Pharmaceuticals Corp. director of plasma-marketing operations, said the company had “put quite a bit of money and remodeled it and expanded it. ... Our lease was up, and we moved to Austintown with a more state-of-the-art facility.”

A news release from Biotest Pharmaceuticals said it moved from its Youngstown office to the 15,165-square-foot Austintown location June 14. That’s Suite 410 within the Austintown Plaza – a spot that most-recently had been the temporary offices for officials from Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course before racino construction was completed.

That same news release also said the relocation would expand the workforce to more than 50 employees. “The space we now occupy needed demolition and extensive work, but it provided the dimensions that we require for our facilities. We have completely expanded and renovated the space and have invested over $2 million in the build-out,” Gamache said.

In 2011, “it was more about retention and them wanting to be as efficient with their equipment and technology,” Woodberry said. “They anticipated there would be some additional [jobs].”

“The [Youngstown] facility was old, lacked efficiency, and we outgrew the space. The immediate area of the old site presented limited growth opportunity, and since our lease was up, we decided to relocate to an area ... that offered better potential for future growth,” Gamache said.

Martin Solomon, president of Austintown Plaza, said conversations began with Biotest around the time that Penn National moved out of its temporary offices. Solomon said though there are some perceptions about plasma-donation centers, there were no issues found during an investigation done before Biotest moved in.

“It is a very well run operation. A lot of their primary customers are college students and things like that, and their parent company is in the pharmaceutical business,” Solomon said. “It’s a highly regulated industry.”

In fact, Youngstown police officials said there had been very minimal calls to the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard location. Similarly, Austintown Police Chief Robert Gavalier said there had been no calls to Biotest since it opened in Austintown.

For Youngstown, Woodberry said in 2011 there were 39 employees at the plasma center, and the business relocation means a loss of $30,000 to $35,000 in tax withholdings for the city of Youngstown. The building in Youngstown has changed ownership hands in the last year.

“I was told of the expectation of another operation of the same function there ... maintaining the status of what we had” with Biotest or greater, Woodberry said.

That operator is Biomat USA Inc., a company under the umbrella of Grifols. It will start out with 25 employees when it launches later this month, and the company moved into the building late last week to begin renovation work.

That work includes “up to $1 million for updates and various things,” said Vlasta Hakes, director of public affairs with Grifols. The Youngstown location appealed to Biomat because “there had been a plasma center before. There had been a donor population, and that it’s close to a college campus. ... It’s a good community to draw employees.”

The decision to move into the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard location was due to Biotest opting out of its lease.

Both Biotest and Biomat take a patron’s blood, extract the plasma and return the red blood cells to the donor. Plasma is then taken and used to manufacture medicine by the two companies or sold to other pharmaceutical companies that produce medicine.

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