WARREN, Ohio – The Western Reserve Port Authority is looking into playing a role with Eastern Gateway Community College’s two downtown Youngstown properties.
Eastern Gateway, which ceased operations last fall, owns Thomas Humphries Hall, which includes a four-level parking garage and ground floor space where Mocha House Downtown Youngtown currently operates, and its former health and workforce center in the former Harshman Building. The port authority acquired the Harshman Building in 2017 and redeveloped it as a potential headquarters before selling it to Eastern Gateway.
Anthony Trevena, WRPA’s executive director, said he has spoken on several occasions with Fred Ransier, conservator of Eastern Gateway’s properties.
“We’ve shared with him our interest in being part of the solution,” Trevena said.
Humphries Hall is across East Federal Street from the Commerce Building, which the port authority acquired from Ohio One Corp. last year and where the port authority is based, along with several other economic development organizations. The health and workforce center is just a block further south, at the corner of East Boardman and South Champion streets.
The port authority had hired an engineer to look at the parking deck late last year.
Trevena discussed the Eastern Gateway property during a review of the port authority’s activities from 2022 to this year for the combined boards of commissioners of Mahoning and Trumbull counties at the port authority’s monthly meeting. Included in the presentation was the port authority’s efforts to maintain and upgrade the assets of Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport — which the port authority was formed to take over in 1992 — and its more recent work in economic development, most notably Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s announcement that it would move forward with a 1-million-square-foot plant on the former BDM Steel property, 560 acres of which the port authority sold to the company in late 2023.
Trevena said WRPA began working on the former BDM Steel property in February 2020 and its board was deeply involved “long before anybody knew anything was going on with that,” in the environmental remediation work that had to happen “for us even consider taking this property.”
He also outlined the results of cooperative agreements with local governments, which resulted in projects such as the West Warren Industrial Park being developed, and its acquisition of several former Steward Health Care properties, including the Belmont Avenue building where it is working with Mahoning County to develop a new home for the county veterans service commission.
“I think we’re all amazed by what we’re seeing and what we’re seeing is going to happen,” Trumbull County Commissioner Anthony Bernard, one of three new commissioners in attendance
Mahoning County Commissioner Geno DiFabio, also new to his county’s board, said he was “blown away” by what he learned, including the activity taking place at the airport. “It’s an economic hub,” he said.
“What you’ve done here is you’ve kept this community and this region ahead of the curve,” Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said.
With all the potential development in the pipeline, Trevena said it is time for his board to “go to the next level” and get involved with residential development for what is expected to be a growing need locally. There currently are four port authorities in Ohio that are getting residential development through direct construction, providing land or assisting with financing.
“We don’t know what we look like yet, but we do know that we need to do something so we want to come to you in the next couple months with some ideas that you might not be expecting,” he said. “We’ve never talked about residential TIFs” – tax increment financing – “before” because they need to start doing what is being done in larger cities if they want to see the development take place her that is occurring in other cities.
Pictured at top: WRPA Executive Director Anthony Trevena discusses economic development initiatives at the organization’s annual meeting May 23.