YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The downtown landmark today known as the Commerce Building was at the heart of one of the most unusual real estate transactions in local business history – after it nearly became the site of a federal building.
Repurposed from a furniture store, the building today houses accounting firms, law offices, marketing and video production companies, a high-end clothier, nonprofit organizations and the showroom of a worldwide distributor of tableware for the hospitality industry in a room that was once a social club for the region’s elite.
How that transformation happened is a process that took place over 40 years.
It was in late July 1984 that the U.S. General Services Administration had identified the Haber’s Furniture building, 201 E. Commerce St., as the preferred site for a new federal building to be built in downtown Youngstown.
As Jerold A. Haber, vice president of Haber Properties Inc., articulated in a letter that appeared in the September 1984 Youngstown Business Journal, “a highly skilled site investigation team” examined no fewer than 10 sites before settling on the property, where his family had operated its furniture store for about 40 years.
“A federal building in keeping with the architectural and symmetrical continuity of Federal Plaza East, and with an abundance of space for on-site parking, could be made possible at this location, and this location alone,” Haber argued in the letter. Anyone seeking – “wittingly or unwittingly” – to end the project at that site in the name of government waste would be committing “an unpatriotic boondoggle,” he asserted.
Those advocating for a property in the west end of downtown for the building included the newly established Youngstown Business Journal.
A photo caption in our January 1985 edition indicated the Haber building remained the site favored by GSA.
Another photo appearing in the August 1985 edition indicated momentum was shifting toward the shuttered Voyager Motor Inn, at the northeast corner of Market and Front streets. A story in our MidDecember 1985 edition disclosed that GSA had a contract with the Pittsburgh bank that owned the Voyager property. Seven years later, ground was broken in 1992 for the building – a new federal courthouse – at that site.
As for the Haber building, it ended up changing hands twice in a span of two minutes on June 16, 1987. Attorney James G. Floyd bought the building from Haber Properties for $425,000 at 3:56 p.m.
Two minutes later, he sold the building to Ohio One Corp., the flagship entity for developer Richard E. Mills’ downtown properties, for the same amount. According to a source close to the negotiations, the price was about 63.5% higher than its appraised value.
“About a year ago, we were actively trying to buy it. But Frank Haber [of Haber Properties] didn’t seem to be interested in selling, or at least making a business-like sell agreement with us,” Mills said in the July 1987 story. “We just shelved the idea and waited until he became interested. Then attorney Floyd said he could deliver us a deed for so many dollars and it was within our budget. So we did it.”
Mills laid out plans for a $3 million redevelopment project to make the former Haber building “one of downtown Youngstown’s smartest state-of-the-art office buildings.”
Discussions already were in progress with potential anchor tenants.
Richard Mills, Ohio One’s current president and Richard E. Mills’ son, recalls the Youngstown Club – located in the then-Bank One Building – was doing a feasibility study regarding whether to rehabilitate the three floors it occupied there or find a new location.
“We were successful in convincing the Youngstown Club that we could add a top floor to that Haber Furniture building and eliminate some of the structural impediments at their current location,” Mills says.
As with nearly any renovation, there were surprises.
The atrium that was added to the building “was nothing more than a big chimney” in the eyes of the Youngstown Fire Department. “It was expensive to meet code,” Mills says.
The building’s façade incorporates doors taken from the former Youngstown Sheet & Tube Laboratory building on Poland Avenue, according to a plaque at the entrance.
The first tenant, as reported in the MidMarch 1989 Business Journal, was an investment firm, Prescott Ball & Turben. The Youngstown Club would move in that September, occupying the entire newly constructed fifth floor and about half of the fourth floor.
“I was fortunate enough to have lunch with my dad there in late ’89 before he passed in January of ’90,” Mills reflects.
Over the years, occupancy at Commerce Building has hovered around 90%, a rate Mills attributes in part to the presence of abundant on-site parking.
Still, in January 2013, the building ended up with a huge vacancy when the Youngstown Club closed its doors. Two years later, entrepreneur George Guanieri, who had owned a Belleria Pizza franchise in Struthers, opened a new restaurant there, The Fifth Floor.
Guanieri had gone to the Commerce Building to inquire about a liquor license, with the intention of opening a small venue for maybe 10 or so customers. That changed when he stepped off the elevator into the fifth floor Youngstown Club space.
“When I saw how gorgeous it was, I knew that I had to be here,” he said according to our March 26, 2015, online story.
The Fifth Floor proved to be short-lived. According to a Sept. 14, 2016, story, the restaurant would close Sept. 28, evicted from the space after failure to pay rent and other bills totaling more than $35,000.
Less than a year and a half later, the space would get a new lease on life. On Feb. 22, 2018, Steelite International USA, a global provider of tableware for the hospitality industry based in New Castle, Pa., announced it would open a showroom on the building’s fifth floor.
Steelite CEO John Miles said work would begin soon on renovating the 15,000-square-foot space, a minimum $1 million investment he expected would be finished by June of that year.
The space would feature a bar for the mixology portion of the business, as well as a fully functional kitchen.
Miles credited the ongoing revitalization of downtown Youngstown – including the soon-to-open DoubleTree by Hilton hotel – with attracting Steelite to downtown.
“The buildings that we’re in tend to be historic buildings,” Miles says. “The Commerce Building is in the vein of other buildings we use around the country in terms of look and feel.”
“What a blessing,” Mills reflects. “John Miles and I negotiated for a year or so to locate them in Commerce or in IBM.”
In a Dec. 5, 2018, story covering the showroom’s opening, Miles offered there was no other showroom globally this size showing tableware for hotels and restaurants.
In June 2022, Miles held a news conference in the showroom to announce plans for Steelite to relocate its corporate headquarters from New Castle to downtown Youngstown’s Taft Technology Center – four years after moving its showroom downtown.
On Jan. 4, 2023, we reported on a real estate website listing of Ohio One’s downtown Youngstown properties, including Commerce and City Centre One, with the intent to have the buildings managed by a new company consisting of Ohio One employees.
Mills noted in the story that he and other Ohio One principals were planning to retire and wanted to see the properties in the hands of a “caring owner.”
“We don’t want to sell to just anybody. We have worked for 50 years to create a good reputation,” he said.
Commerce was one of the two properties that the Western Reserve Port Authority approved purchasing from Ohio One at the Sept. 18 meeting of its board of directors. The purchase price for Commerce was $2.5 million.
“We want to continue the legacy of what the Mills family has done for this part of downtown for over 50 years,” Anthony Trevena, WRPA’s executive director, told The Business Journal.
“WRPA has been a great tenant, and we are excited to be a part of their transition into a great owner in downtown Youngstown,” Mills says.
“Their dedication to our region helps to ensure that City Centre and the Commerce Building will remain in good hands.”
Pictured at top: The Commerce Building in Youngstown formerly housed Haber’s Furniture.