VIENNA TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Demolition of a downtown Youngstown parking garage could get underway in early 2026, a Western Reserve Port Authority official said.

The port authority last week closed on the purchase of Eastern Gateway Community College’s Thomas Humphries Hall and health workforce buildings, said Anthony Trevena, WRPA executive director. The community college ceased operations last year.

WRPA’s board of directors, which met Wednesday morning at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, authorized Trevena in June to negotiate the acquisition of Humphries Hall, 101 E. Boardman St., and the health workforce building, 39 S. Champion St.

“You’re now the proud owners of a parking deck for hopefully as short a period of time as possible,” Trevena told the board Wednesday. The parking deck is part of the 39 S. Champion property, which also has classroom and office space and houses Mocha House Downtown Youngstown. An engineering report showed the parking garage is unusable because of the condition of its ramps.

The port authority previously owned 101 E. Boardman, the former Harshman Building, which it bought in 2017, and after renovating it sold it to Eastern Gateway.

Randy Partika, WRPA project manager and development engineer, said the port authority has a request for proposals out now for a design-demolition contract, and he expects the board to hire a firm during next month’s meeting to prepare plans for demolishing the building and leaving the site ready for whatever development takes place there.

Preparing those plans likely will take three to four months, with a goal of beginning demolition of the structure in February, depending on when the port authority raises the estimated $3.5 million it will cost, he continued.

“We don’t have all the funding secured yet. So are we going to do it in February? I don’t know yet, but we’re working on that,” he said. “So that’s the main goal.”

Trevena also acknowledged he was in discussions with the owners of Mocha House regarding a potential relocation of the restaurant.

“We’ll hopefully have more to talk about in October,” he said. “We’re in a good place.”

Dam Removal

During the meeting, the board approved a $3 million design-build contract with RiverReach Construction, Barberton, for removal of the Main Street dam in Warren. Removal of the dam, which is about a mile south of downtown Warren, near the site where Kimberly-Clark Corp. is building an $800 million plant, is being funded entirely with money from Ohio’s Natural Resource Damages Fund, Partika said. 

Design work for the project probably will take four to five months, with sediment removal likely beginning in February or March, he said.

“About July and August, hopefully when the river is down, nice and dry, we’ll have equipment in to remove the actual dam,” he said. “Then we’ve got the riverbank restoration that follows.”

Other Projects

Trevena also reported that work is progressing at the Kimberly-Clark site. Some walls have gone up on the building, a plant manager has been hired and the company is expected to announce an operations director and human resource director soon, he said.  

Trevena and his staff also provided updates on various projects, including Air Heritage Park, a 22-acre site that features a pollinator garden and a 1-mile walking trail that follows the silhouette of a C-130 aircraft, and the new Mahoning County veterans center in Youngstown.  

“We definitely expect this to be quite the destination for people coming out and taking selfies and pictures,” Trevena said of the new park, which is not open to the public yet.

The veterans center is expected to be complete by late October, according to Sarah Lown, public finance manager for the port authority.

“The veterans are very happy with this project,” she said.

Trevena said representatives of the state veterans services commission also have visited. 

“They’re really impressed that we’ve done this for our community,” he said.

Partika also told the port authority that bids will be opened Oct. 8 for the new aviation education center to be built at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. A pre-bid meeting was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and he expected at least 50 contractors to attend.