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Youngstown council approved a design and construction management contract for a downtown amphitheater and riverfront park
YOUNGSTOWN
City council authorized the board of control to sign a contract for about $800,000 with a Columbus firm for final design and construction management work on the proposed downtown amphitheater and riverfront park.
Council gave its approval for the board to negotiate a deal with MKSK, which already has received $94,000 from the city for pre-design work for the project. The city selected MKSK from among six proposals to handle this work in July 2015.
The park would go along the Mahoning River from the South Avenue Bridge, passing under the Market Street Bridge, to just west of Hazel Street at the former site of the Wean United Building, demolished in 2014. The site of the 3,250-seat amphitheater will be at the former Wean location on South Phelps Street.
The outdoor facility is designed to attract acts that prefer to perform outdoors during the summer – the slowest time of the year for the city-owned indoor Covelli Centre – as well as be a location for festivals and other community events.
The work was to be finished by this fall, but is being pushed back to a projected completion date of May 2018 “in order to do it properly” and “not rush it,” said city Finance Director David Bozanich.
The project’s first phase with the park and amphitheater will cost about $8 million to $9 million.
The city last month created a fund of up to $12 million: $4 million from a 20-year loan from the city’s Community Development Block Grant; $5 million from the city’s water, wastewater and environmental sanitation funds; and the rest from sponsorships including naming rights, Bozanich said.
Also Wednesday, council voted to have the board of control give a tax abatement and $350,000 in water and wastewater grants to Fireline Inc., an Andrews Avenue business that manufactures industrial ceramics primarily for the aerospace industry.
Fireline is investing $5.76 million on a 25,000-square-foot addition to be finished by the end of the year. It currently operates out of a location that’s about 91,000 square feet.
The 75-percent, 10-year real property tax abatement would save Fireline $240,076 with the company paying $80,025 over the life of the abatement.
Also, council declared a 11,483-square-foot vacant property as surplus and sold it to Fireline for $10. The company will use the parcel for green space.
Council also agreed Wednesday to have the board of control enter into a contract with the lowest and best bidder for $3.5 million worth of demolition, asbestos abatement, site clearance, grading and seeding of residential and commercial structures.
That’s about $500,000 more than what the city spent on demolition in 2016.