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Hazardous-material tests set for former Wick Six properties
YOUNGSTOWN
The city hired MS Consultants Inc. to determine if there are underground tanks containing hazardous materials at the site of two former Wick Avenue car-dealership properties in an effort to demolish the vacant structures.
The Youngstown company will receive $49,412 for the testing, which is expected to start shortly and be finished by Dec. 4. The board of control approved the contract Thursday.
The properties are the former State Chevrolet, between Olive Street and Strausbaugh Avenue, and the former Barrett Cadillac, between Linden Avenue and Sycamore Street, said Abigail Beniston, the city’s code-enforcement and blight-remediation specialist.
The two were among a group of new-car dealerships known as the Wick Six. As the area deteriorated, the dealerships left with the last one leaving in the early 1990s.
The city took ownership at no cost of the State and Barrett properties, leasing them to other businesses over the years, but they are now vacant.
The buildings at the two properties are in poor condition, Beniston said. Testing done earlier this year found asbestos and other hazardous materials in the buildings, he added.
The cost of cleanup and demolition is $600,000 to $700,000 if there are no underground tanks containing hazardous materials, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of the city’s public-works department.
Demolition is expected next year, Beniston said.
“We want to find potential businesses interested in developing those properties,” Beniston said.
Most of the other Wick Six buildings have been demolished by private contractors.
Also, the board of control agreed to give a $20,000 grant to the Sterling-McCullough Williams Funeral Home on Belmont Avenue.
The business is installing a decorative iron fence with pillars, adding lighting and landscaping at a cost of $53,000.
Sterling Williams told the city’s Design Review Committee in July the work was needed to help stop illegal activity in the funeral home’s parking lot and near it. The activity, he said, included drug sales and use, prostitution and public drunkenness.