Port Authority Approves Capital Lease for $12.2M Trailstar Expansion

WARREN, Ohio – Trailstar International will begin work in May on an 80,000-square-foot expansion in Smith Township.

The project, estimated at $12.2 million, will more than double the company’s existing 66,000 square feet of space, Anthony Trevena, executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority, said.

During their regularly scheduled monthly meeting Wednesday morning, members of the port authority’s board of directors approved entering into a capital lease agreement with Trailstar for the expansion, which is expected to be finished in February 2024.

The port authority similarly assisted Trailstar with a $9.3 million expansion in 2019.

Under the terms of the agreement, the port authority will provide up to $13 million in bond financing and issue a sales tax exemption certificate. The company plans to add 80 full-time positions to the 85 already employed.

“This is almost doubling their workforce. This is incredibly expensive, exciting for us,” Trevena said.

In other action during Wednesday’s meeting, which was held at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna Township, the port authority approved the sale of two properties to Industrial Commercial Properties LLC, Mayfield Heights, and the acquisition of several local properties owned by Steward Health Care Systems LLC.

The port authority sold the industrial building at 1551 Vienna Parkway, Vienna Township, to ICG for $5 million, and the Boardman Township former bank property that the port authority redeveloped as a commercial plaza that includes a Dunkin Donuts for $1.15 million. 

The 26 parcels that the port authority purchased for $300,000 from Steward Health, which operates Trumbull Regional Medical Center in Warren and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland Township, as well as other facilities, includes a mix of vacant lots and structures in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

Some of the buildings “have exhausted their useful life,” Trevena acknowledged, and will be demolished, and the sites will be remediated. The 1915 Belmont Ave. building in Youngstown, which years ago housed a grocery store, “has a lot of potential,” he said.

Pictured at top: A dump trailer manufactured by Trailstar International.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.