Demolition of Commercial Building in Warren to Begin

WARREN, Ohio – A building that has been vacant for the better part of a decade is finally coming down.  

Representatives from Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and the city announced Wednesday that demolition of the blighted structure will begin this week.

“It’s like addition by subtraction,” said Matt Martin, executive director of Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership. “We are removing the eyesore, lifting the values of property around it and looking at future use.”

The building at 418 Main Ave. SW is among 100 demolitions undertaken by TNP since January 2022. Martin said the cost to demolish the building, including asbestos removal, is $376,000.

Martin said the building has been vacant since 2015. Its primary tenant was the city of Warren, which used the building for office space.

The Ohio Building Demolition and Site Revitalization program, which is designed to provide grants for the remediation of brownfield sites and prepare them for future economic development, allocated more than $7 million for the Trumbull County Land Bank, which is managed by TNP.

Martin says the city of Warren matched 25% of that money to do the work there.

“It has allowed us to demolish already, or line up for demolition, over 100 properties,” he said. “A lot of those are residential, but quite a few of those are also commercial properties.”

Martin noted TNP has been around since 2010 and has partnered with the city of Warren since its inception.

“As managers of the land bank, we have worked with the city to tear down more than 1,000 properties in the city of Warren,” he said.

Although TNP had started out dealing with the demolition or repair of mostly residential buildings, Martin said the organization is looking at an increasing amount of commercial structures.

“There was a large amount of demolitions, not just in Warren or Trumbull County, but throughout the state – residential demolitions after the foreclosure crisis,” he said. “We see communities like Warren where there unfortunately is a lot of blight. It’s lopsided with commercial buildings being left behind. So now there is a new focus on cleaning up commercial properties, as well.”

Tony Wilson, manager of Generation X Contractors LLC in Lordstown, will lead the demolition crew. He said the project should be completed within a few weeks.

The building has been serving the community for around 50 years, Warren Mayor William “Doug” Franklin said. During that time, it housed the community development department, as well as a few other departments.

“There has already been interest in repurposing this land from other investors and developers,” Franklin said. “This is what we do, and it is all about partnership and collaboration.”

Franklin said the revitalization of the riverfront property is important to the city because it is adjacent to the downtown area.

“This partnership is one of the reasons we are able to take down our largest demolition project in the city’s history, which is the old St. Joseph’s Hospital,” he said. “This is a continuation of that collaboration and progressive effort that we strategize on these types of properties.”

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.