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Businessmen, mayor give encouraging presentations about investment in Warren
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Downtown developer Mark Marvin, revealing that he is acquiring a sixth downtown building, was among several businessmen and Warren’s mayor who gave encouraging presentations at Friday’s Good Morning Warren breakfast.
The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber event was at Packard Music Hall, one of the locations used as an example of positive changes.
Marvin, a 1983 Warren G. Harding High graduate who returned to Warren in 2010 to invest about $29 million to build a new Reinforcement Systems factory on West Market Street, said he was closing Friday on the purchase of the prominent Atrium Building on Courthouse Square.
It will be his fifth building on the square, after his acquisition of the Mahoning Building at 197 W. Market St., plus two next door at 193 and 187 W. Market, and the former WRRO radio-station building at 124 North Park.
At 197 W. Market, he is only a couple of weeks away from being able to move the Regional Chamber to the renovated fourth floor.
Other tenants also will be moving so that the first four floors will be for commercial use and the top three will be converted to residential, including Martin’s own seventh-floor “penthouse suite” and office, he said.
He has big plans for the North Park location, too, where the Shops On The Square business incubator is located. In 2017, he’s going to turn the second and third floors into luxury apartments in spaces that have not been occupied since the 1940s, he said.
He recently acquired his fifth building, the James Jewelers building at 112 North Park, and is in talks with someone about starting a craft brewery there.
He was closing Friday on the purchase of the Atrium Building, 103 W. Market, the former Strouss Department Store and Eastern Gateway Community College, where he hopes to attract a bakery, coffee house or pizza shop and 15 retail shops on the second floor, he said.
He also is working with Chris Alan, CEO of Auto-Parkit of Los Angeles, who is working to move his company into former Packard Electric buildings on Dana Street Northeast.
Eric Ryan, owner of JAC Productions, which has managed the Packard Music Hall the past 18 months, said the 125,000 people who have watched concerts involving performers such as Merle Haggard, Joe Walsh and Counting Crows have increased the number of people using the hall by five times the number who saw shows there in the 18 months before that.
Jeff Shaffer, membership director for the Avalon Hotel and Resort in Howland, said Avalon Holdings is spending $16 million to turn the former Magnusson Hotel into “one of the finest resorts in Northeast Ohio.”
In the first 18 months, Avalon has gutted the 144 guest rooms to turn them into 132 rooms, rebuilt the indoor pool, created a new lobby bar, built a new fitness center with $1 million in equipment and created the Avalon Conference Center with six new meeting rooms.
Mayor Doug Franklin said the downtown amphitheater will be getting an additional 200 seats and other improvements.