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Downtown property group ordered to remove two old signs before it could put up a new one
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s Design Review Committee ordered NYO Property Group, one of downtown’s major landlords, to remove older vinyl signs on two of its structures before it can install a new one on another building it owns.
Committee members expressed frustration Tuesday with NYO for having signs on its Erie Terminal Place apartment building at 112 W. Commerce St. and the vacant Legal Arts Building at 101 Market St. for about 21/2 years when they gave them permission to have the signs up for six months.
DRC member Dave Kosec, building manager for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, said there was no reason to grant the request to NYO for its 16 Wick building at 16 Wick Ave. because the real-estate company ignored the committee’s time limit on the two other signs.
Bill D’Avignon, the committee’s chairman and the city’s Community Development Agency director, also said he was concerned that the nine-story 16 Wick is empty. Sarah Delliquadri, NYO’s creative director, said the building hasn’t had a tenant since March 2015.
“You want to turn this building into a billboard,” D’Avignon said. “I’m more concerned about the building’s vacancy.”
That building is probably best known for having scaffolding surround it for more than three years, coming down in 2011.
NYO is looking at the possibility of using the first floor for commercial space and making the rest of building residential, Delliquadri said. However, she said, there are no plans to do it now.
The company’s focus is on making the Stambaugh Building, across the street from 16 Wick, into a DoubleTree Hilton hotel.
Work on that project was supposed to start last year, but hasn’t begun.
The plan is to convert that vacant 12-story, 109-year-old building into a 120-bed hotel with a restaurant and banquet facility.
The project is estimated to cost $31 million and increase to about $39.7 million if work to a nearby parking deck is done.
In addition to Stambaugh and 16 Wick, NYO’s other vacant downtown properties include the Legal Arts Building, the St. Vincent de Paul Building at 235 Wick Ave. and the Harshman Building at 101 E. Boardman St.
The company has developed three downtown properties into apartments and purchased a fourth after it was completed.
Its latest project was the Wick Tower at 34 W. Federal St., which opened in November 2015.
The old signs and the new one advertise downtown living at those four locations.
Delliquadri also requested Tuesday that the DRC permit NYO to install an aluminum fence in front of Wick “to block it off and make it a little more private for” its tenants. The proposal passed 6-1 with Kosec as the lone no vote.