A long vacant community center and church is being demolished

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The city will give up to $8,000 toward the expense to remove asbestos from a long vacant Oak Hill Avenue community center and church that will be demolished.

The board of control approved the expense Thursday with St. Patrick Church and the Oak Hill Collaborative each paying $2,500 for the abatement work at the former Clarence Robinson Center, built in 1920.

“The building is dangerous,” said Patrick Kerrigan, the collaborative’s executive director. “The floor and the walls are caving in. The chimney collapsed last year. It’s terribly unsafe.”

The asbestos abatement cost is about $12,550, said Abigail Beniston, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent.

The city’s street department will demolish the building once the asbestos is removed, she said.

The building, on the corner of Oak Hill and West Chalmers avenues, closed as a community center in the 1990s and became a church for a short period of time, Kerrigan said. It’s been vacant for about two decades, he said.

Abatement work will start April 1 and the building on the South Side will be demolished three to four weeks later, Beniston said.

“It’s a neighborhood eyesore,” she said.

After it’s demolished, the property will be green space, Kerrigan said.

The Mahoning County Land Bank obtained the title to the property last month.