20 evictions averted by purchase of Warren apartment building

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The 20 residents of the seven-story Reeves apartment building on West Market Street will no longer be evicted now that Chris Sikora has purchased the building at a sheriff’s sale.

Sikora offered the winning bid of $85,000 Thursday morning, enough to pay off the $59,525 in back taxes and other fees owed on the building and give the former owner $12,400, according to the Trumbull County Treasurer’s Office, which filed the foreclosure because of back taxes.

The former owner, East End Road Burton Inc. of Painesville, notified the residents in mid-September that they would have to move out by the end of this month.

The manager of the building, built in 1926 along the Mahoning River just west of Courthouse Square, said the owner was evicting everyone because she could no longer afford to keep the building open because of needed repairs.

But Sikora, who operates Buckeye Storage and Shredding on McMyler Street Northwest, said he plans to renovate the building and continue to operate it as apartments.

Current residents are encouraged to stay, he said.

“It’s a really nice building as it sits right now,” Sikora said of the 45,000-square-foot building and property with an appraised value of $375,000.

The building at 295 W. Market is across from the SCOPE senior-citizen center and the historic Thumm’s Bike and Clock Shop in an area some refer to as the Peninsula because it’s surrounded on three sides by bends in the Mahoning River.

Sikora said he believes the building only needs “small renovations,” but he has started to discuss more broad-ranging ideas with city officials and a Kent State University architecture and environmental design student who helped write a report on the Peninsula.

Leslie Lamb, a senior architectural studies major and historic preservation minor, said she is writing a historical-structure report on the Reeves building. That will be part of her educational program, but she’s also doing it because of her personal interest in the building.

James A. Reeves had the building constructed, she said. It initially had retail space and a restaurant on the first floor with a kitchen in the basement and residential units on floors 2 through 6. It now has three retail units, but the restaurant was converted into four apartments.

The building is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but it probably could be, and that might make it eligible for tax credits, she said.

“It’s a beautiful plot of land, but it’s been forgotten,” Lamb said of the peninsula. “It could be a great place for Warren residents,” she said. The building needs electrical and plumbing upgrades, and extensive renovations could cost millions, she said.