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Youngstown board approves $4 million loan for company building complex at YSU
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s board of control agreed to loan $4 million to Campus Associates LLC, which is building the Enclave, a $16-million, 194-bed student-housing complex at Youngstown State University.
The company provided an irrevocable letter of credit from a lending institution to get the 12-month, 0.25-percent interest loan.
The board also voted Thursday to give the company a $500,000 grant from the city’s water fund for the project and a tax abatement.
The project is to be complete by August 2018 in time for next year’s fall semester.
There will be 65 units in the dormitory part of the complex with a total of 194 bedrooms taking up 105,000 square feet of space.
The structure at the corner of Lincoln and Wick avenues will also include 11,000 square feet of retail space.
Also, the board approved accepting a $398,793 federal grant to help offset much of the cost of hiring four firefighters and slow down overtime expenses.
City council voted Tuesday to take the grant to avoid a cut in personnel and a truck at Fire Station No. 2 on West Indianola Avenue on the South Side.
With the four hires, expected in the next 10 days, the fire department will have a staff of 127.
The grant was initially for up to $398,793 with the city paying 25 percent of the cost of the new employees for the first two years and 65 percent in the third year.
The city, however, received a waiver from the federal government on the matching percentages while receiving the full amount of the grant.
The city was going to have to pay about $250,000 over the three years toward the four new firefighters’ salaries and benefits, said fire Chief John J. O’Neill Jr.
Because of the waiver, however, that amount will be reduced to about $162,000 with most of the cost coming in the third, and final, year, he said.