YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – At the latest Youngstown planning and development committee meeting, Councilman Julius Oliver made a request regarding the update on the 20 Federal Place project: “We only want good news today.” 

He didn’t get it.

Adam Buente, assistant city law director, announced at the Aug. 12 meeting the city had ended its relationship with Bluelofts Inc.

The city had contracted with the Dallas-based company last year to redevelop the seven-story downtown building – a $57 million project. Bluelofts was the sole respondent to a request for proposals for the city-owned property.

Buente also announced that the city would return the $24 million in historic preservation tax credits because securing a new partner by the deadline was unlikely.  

A statement from the city said the project’s complexity and financing structure proved too great a financial risk to the city “and as stewards of taxpayer dollars it is our duty to pause pursuit of their proposal.”

Before closing the building for remediation in 2022, the city was subsidizing the building’s operation for about $400,000 annually.

Now the city is left with a historically significant but vacant 332,000-square-foot tower on West Federal Street.

City officials have said that the environmental remediation and demolition work – funded by a $6.9 million grant and an approximately $1.7 million match – was necessary to find a partner to redevelop it. But so far, those efforts haven’t proved to be much of an inducement.

If it’s such a good opportunity, perhaps city officials need to do a deeper evaluation of why potential partners are reluctant to commit to downtown.

The city’s critics certainly could offer suggestions, from the eviction of 20 Federal’s tenants more than half a year before the remediation work got underway, to seemingly endless street construction, to the city’s income tax rate.

At the meeting, Buente also suggested the city could partner with other government entities on the project.   

Certainly, the approach so far isn’t working.

But the city cannot allow 20 Federal to remain the biggest empty structure in the heart of the city.