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Courthouse restoration delayed
YOUNGSTOWN
The restoration of the Mahoning County Courthouse has been delayed by the need to remove and replace unforeseen asbestos roofing discovered this fall in its statue pedestal.
That means the re-installation of the copper statues on the building’s roof will be deferred from this month to November or possibly until next spring, said James Fortunato, county purchasing director.
“We would like to see them in November,” he said of the statues.
“We’re working as fast and as safely as we can to complete the project, and you just run into unforeseen things with a 105-year-old building,” he added.
The county hopes it won’t be necessary to re-erect the scaffolding that enshrouds the front of the building next spring, Fortunato said.
A replacement pedestal support beam will be installed from inside the building, he added.
Once the statues, which have been restored by an Oberlin firm, are returned here, their heads will need to be re-attached, Fortunato said.
Removal of the heads from the 14-foot-high statues was necessary to assure clearances under highway bridges during their transport, he explained.
Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the county commissioners, said she wants the statues displayed at ground level in front of the courthouse the morning before a crane returns them to their perch on the courthouse roof.
The building is now undergoing roof replacement.
County officials also plan to add work to the project, which would be completed next year, including repairs to weather-damaged bricks and windows in the building’s interior window wells, Fortunato said.
“The windows still have some original wooden frames that are all rotten,” he explained.
Also proposed is cleaning the building’s granite exterior and upgrading its exterior lighting, he said.
The extent to which that will add to the project’s $6 million cost isn’t yet known, Fortunato said.
The county commissioners must approve any additional work, he noted.
“We going to probably put another half million [dollars] or so into it,” said Commissioner David Ditzler, adding that he’d like to see the accumulation of pigeon excrement removed from the building’s exterior.
“We want to do the whole building right,” he said.