YOUNGSTOWN — The Western Reserve Port Authority board has agreed to acquire two well-known properties in Youngstown — the former Clark’s Bar and Billiards on the West Side and the former McGuffey Plaza on the city’s East Side.
The goal, said port authority Executive Director Anthony Trevena, is to return both to productive use.
Meanwhile, the popular aviation and auto event Wings-n-Wheels, put on by the Ernie Hall Aviation Museum, is moving from the SLOAS Airfield in Howland to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport this summer.
PROPERTY
ACQUISITIONS
Clark’s Bar and Billiards, 3143 Mahoning Ave., will be purchased for $2,000 from the Mahoning County Land Bank, which acquired the property in February.
The bar is closed, but the building, which includes two second-level apartments, is in good condition, Trevena said. Some of the proceeds from the sale of another Mahoning Avenue building the port authority acquired last year from the land bank, the Dave’s Auto Parts building at 1588 Mahoning Ave., are being used to purchase the bar.
“We’re going to ‘vanilla box’ it,” Trevena said after the port authority board authorized him to do the deal. “(We’ll) get the apartments in rentable order and then we’ll actually be looking for an entrepreneur or business person. It could be a maker space, creative outlet, a restaurant, it could be a bar. It could be a lot of things.”
The port authority is selling the Dave’s Auto Parts building for $110,000 to Voyager Specialty Coffee and Teas, a Canfield-based coffee and tea wholesaler, to relocate its production line and distribution center.
The board also greenlit Trevena to acquire the property of the former McGuffey Plaza near the intersection of McGuffey Road and North Garland Avenue for $162,000 from D&E Holdings LLC. The company is registered to David Bonamase of Canfield, according to records with the Ohio Secretary of State.
The plaza, one of the earliest developments built by the Cafaro Company, done in partnership with Boardman developer Edward DeBartolo Sr., was torn down some time after 2013. According to The Vindicator archives, D&E Holdings, LLC bought the land that also housed the former Garland Plaza for $150,000 in 2013.
Trevena said the land needs cleaned and graded before it can be marketed.
“We don’t have an end user in mind at this time, but we’re certainly looking for opportunities for future development to create jobs,” he said.
AVIATION / AUTO SHOW
“This is huge. We are very, very excited,” Trevena said of the move of Wings-n-Wheels to the airport, which the port authority oversees.
This year, the event is expanding to two days and will include more than 100 airplanes and more than 1,000 vehicles, plus a mini museum with items from the Ernie Hall Aviation Museum, trade show and vendors, Trevena said.
It will be Aug. 6 and 7.
Museum board member Bob Griffin said the move was needed because the event has outgrown the airfield on North River Road.
“The Youngstown airport will be a much better venue for us,” Griffin said. “We can accommodate more cars, more parking for general admission, definitely more aircraft and more varied type of aircraft because we have a long runway there.
“We loved having it there (at SLOAS) because the museum was there, but the fact of the matter is it was very hard to handle the crowd,” he said.
Already, the commander of the 910th Airlift Wing adjacent to the airport has agreed to provide a C-130 for the show, Griffin said. The show also has commitments for two World War II-era transport planes and a famous Vietnam-era transport plane, a Fairchild C-123 Provider that has been in multiple films, including “Con Air,” he said.
The show was canceled in 2021 and 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a big hit for the organization because the event is a major fundraiser for the museum, officials for which are trying to raise money for a new building, Griffin said. The museum board also gives aviation-related scholarships.
