Design Panel Advances P&L Heat Treating Project

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A $460,000 expansion for a city heat-treating firm moved one step closer to execution Tuesday morning.

The city’s Design Review Committee, at its monthly meeting, approved a proposal from P&L Heat Treating & Grinding Inc. to erect a 9,135-square-foot pre-engineered metal building adjacent to its 25,000-square-foot building at 313 E. Wood St.

It was one of three items on the board’s agenda Tuesday.

The building façade will have eight-inch, split-face masonry to an eight-foot height, while the rest of the exterior will be covered in vertical, colored steel siding.

“It’s a big time for us,” William Pociask, P&L president, told members of the committee. “It’s an exciting time because we’re expanding. We’re growing labor-wise, size-wise and equipment-wise.”

The expansion will house additional vacuum furnaces for heat treating of metals, Pociask said. The company recently picked up “a big contract” with American Axle & Manufacturing Inc., a major supplier to the North American automobile industry.

“That did quite a bit for us,” along with general optimism regarding the economy, he said. The company already is running around the clock to keep up business, and he said he plans to add at least three employees to P&L’s existing workforce of 17.

In July, the city’s planning commission approved rezoning two parcels from mixed use institutional to industrial green to accommodate the project. The company will go before the city Board of Zoning Appeals later this month for a variance associated with the project, said Laura Fulmer, zoning officer.

The company is seeking a front-yard setback for the project, said Taron Cunningham, city community development director and planning deputy director.

The zoning appeals board meets Oct. 16.

Also during the meeting, the committee approved requests to remove pavers in front of the Huntington Bank Building downtown and to infill the east wall of the Seventh District Court of Appeals building with new cast stone to match the appearance of the façade.

Murphy Contracting Co., Youngstown, will replace the brick pavers, the last remnant from the former Federal Plaza design, with concrete. The project will cost about $40,000.

The existing pavement has deteriorated and poses a tripping hazard, said Michal Gentile, president and owner of Murphy Contractin, and water leaks from the surface into a subbasement below the pavement.

The current surface presents a problem for people who use wheelchairs, added Dennis Wilson, facility manager for Huntington.

Resurfacing the east side of the Court of Appeals building, which is owned by the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp., will cost $130,000, estimated Brian Downie, project manager with Alex Downie & Sons Co., Youngstown.

Dave Kosec, a design review committee member who also serves as president of the YCACIC, abstained from voting on the courthouse work.

Pictured: William Pociask, P&L’s president, appears before the city’s Design Review Committee.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.