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Youngstown committee approves plans for downtown hotel
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s Design Review Committee approved plans for various amenities to the 134-room DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton being built at the Stambaugh Building downtown.
Among the items the DRC approved Tuesday include a valet drop-off lane on Wick Avenue, a loading and unloading zone, exterior plants and outdoor seating for a restaurant and coffee shop that will be at the hotel. The work on the items will begin in October.
The hotel project, first announced in 2014 at 44 E. Federal St., is to be finished by December.
The $35.4 million project is being done by Youngstown Stambaugh Hotel LLC, a subsidiary of the NYO Property Group, a development company that owns numerous properties in downtown Youngstown. The hotel’s lead architectural firm is MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown.
The DoubleTree will be the city’s first downtown hotel since the 1974 closing of the Voyager Motor Inn. The Thomas D. Lambros Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse now sits on the former Voyager site.
Meanwhile, the DRC approved the location of a bus-shelter sculpture made from a shipping container and steel at the corner of Wick Avenue and West Federal Street near the JPMorgan Chase Bank building.
The committee approved the design in February, but rejected the bus-shelter sculpture’s original location on Market Street in front of the Mahoning County Courthouse.
Committee members said the shelter would take up too much of the sidewalk possibly making it more congested for people walking in that area.
At the time, committee members told those proposing the shelter to search for a new location. The new site was approved Tuesday.
This project is among five selected for funding under a $100,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant awarded last year to Youngstown State University for downtown beautification as part of the Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts Through Community Engagement [INPLACE] Initiative.