YOUNGSTOWN — With the Covelli Centre’s debt paid off, the city is moving ahead with a series of improvement projects at the 19-year-old entertainment facility.

The most expensive improvement at the center since it opened in October 2005 is underway.

The city is paying $1,236,000 to Boak & Sons to replace a large portion of its original roof.

Ice and snow caused extensive damage to the roof resulting in water leaking into the kitchen, office space and some of the loges, said city Finance Director Kyle Miasek.

“It’s the first major expense to come out of the Covelli budget,” he said. “It’s nice to put money back into the facility.”

The city made its final payment Jan. 2 on an $11.9 million loan it took out in 2005 for its portion of the center’s $45 million construction.

The city is using money it gets from the building’s operating surplus as well as revenue from a 5.5% admission tax on tickets sold at the venue to pay for the improvements.

“Not a lot has been done over the years,” said Jordan Ryan, the center’s executive director and vice president of JAC Management Group, the company that runs the center, the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre and Wean Park for the city. “We’re excited the facility was paid off and we use those funds for improvement work. We need to do work to bring the facility into the 2020s and pump money back into the place.”

Ryan added: “We’re certainly happy to use the admission tax and profits for the facility. It’s needed.”

The roof should be finished around the first week of October, Ryan said.

Before the roof work, the largest expense at the center was $1 million paid in 2022 by the Youngstown Phantoms, the hockey team that calls Covelli home, to replace the facility’s ice plant – which makes and freezes ice at the rink.

The ice plant stopped working at the beginning of 2022 and the rental of a temporary plant cost about $22,000. The agreement to have the Phantoms pay for the ice plant was part of a five-year extension and two five-year options the team signed to continue playing at the center.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

The center will also have its heating, ventilation and air conditioning system’s automation software upgraded and purchase parts to replace damaged and broken fixed seats at the facility.

City council agreed Aug. 28 to have the board of control sign those two contracts. The board hasn’t approved the contracts, but is expected to soon.

Council authorized the board to spend $58,173 to Irwin Seating Co. of Walker, Michigan, for parts for the seats in the center’s bowl area.

“We’ve been drawing on a stockpile of parts left over from the original construction,” Ryan said. “We’ve run out of those extra parts. There’s normal wear and tear after 19 years with broken arms, backs and seats.”

Because many events at the center, such as concerts, have stages, the facility doesn’t need all of its seats so it took some of the chairs and chair parts from what would be behind the stage for replacements, Ryan said.

But with comedian Sebastian Maniscalco coming Nov. 14 to the center and every seat in the house is for sale – the show could draw 7,000 people – the seat contract is needed, Ryan said.

Because the seats used at the center are no longer made, the largest expense for the work is to have Irwin Seating make a mold that matches, Ryan said.

“They don’t have our parts, but they have our mold,” he said. “The seats were uniquely built for the arena.”

Ryan said there are no plans to replace the bowl seats, but the club seats will be replaced in the future.

The center is also looking in the future at replacing the 1,800 temporary chairs on the floor and building a storage facility for those chairs and other equipment. Other future projects being considered are replacements and upgrades to the audio-visual equipment, the hockey rink dashboards, new digital signs and additional roof work.

The other contract waiting for board of control approval is $69,119 to Johnson Controls Inc. of Youngstown to upgrade the automation system software that controls the center’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

The center is currently using a first-generation version of the system from 2005, Ryan said. It will be replaced with Version 12, he said.

“Our system is obsolete,” Ryan said. “It’s been giving us problems. It’s supposed to be automated, but we have to use people to run it. When they made adjustments, they brought in a floppy disk. The new system will help us regulate the temperature a lot better.”

Ryan expects the new system to be ready by the end of the year.