By ED RUNYAN

Staff writer

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners could vote at today’s meeting to take ownership of a building on Patriot Drive in Austintown purchased by the Western Reserve Port Authority to provide space for the county building inspection department, county planning commission and its lead abatement office.

Commissioners Carol Rimedio Righetti confirmed Wednesday that a resolution regarding the 55,000-square foot former InfoCision call center in Austintown will be on today’s agenda.

The Western Reserve Port Authority board authorized Anthony Trevena, port authority executive director, to negotiate a deal to purchase the building at 5740 Patriot Blvd. in Austintown for no more than $2.5 million, according to Vindicator files.

At the time, Trevena said the port authority had “identified a strong partner for the space,” but did not identify the partner, saying that it would have to wait until “all agreements are formally approved.” Trevena could not be reached to comment Wednesday.

According to LoopNet, an online commercial real estate marketplace, the single-story building occupies nearly 10 acres and has 570 parking spaces. It was built in 1997 and remodeled in 2008, the same year InfoCision acquired the building for $2.9 million, according to the Mahoning County Auditor’s Office.

When Commissioner Anthony Traficanti was asked Wednesday whether the county was thinking of moving some county offices out of its Oakhill office building on Oak Hill Avenue, he said he felt that any decision about such matters should wait until after the new commissioner, Geno DiFabio, takes office in early January.

“It is my opinion we should hold off on any big purchase items or any major decisions until Mr. DeFabio is in there, and he can sit down with our purchasing director (James) Fortunato and get legal direction from the prosecutor’s office … on transferring or doing anything,” Traficanti said.

Traficanti said nothing has been presented to him “about moving anyone out of Oakhill. I know Carol and Dave have said they want to move people out of Oakhill, but it’s just not easy to do.”

He said he would like to be able to sit down with DiFabio and “look at all of the evaluations of all of our properties. Then we can make some type of decision if we are or if we are not moving offices. We own Oakhill. We have put millions of dollars into that property. We have ample land where we could build a facility there.

“We also have an option of tearing down a parking deck to make more space to build a new morgue or put a new (Mahoning County Job and Family Services) building there,” Traficanti said.

JFS is the largest county department in Oakhill, but Oakhill also is home to the county morgue and coroner’s office, the county Board of Elections, county Title Office and county Veterans Service Commission, which is planning to move into its own building on Belmont Avenue in Youngstown in 2025.

“We have options, but if these options are not given to the new commissioner, it’s really going to make it hard for him to understand what we are doing, and I am holding off on doing anything,” he said.

David Betras, board of elections member, has made it clear he wants to move the elections board out of Oakhill.

Traficanti said if Ditzler and Rimedio Righetti vote to use the former call center on Patriot Boulevard in Austintown for county offices before Ditzler leaves office, “all I can do is abstain or vote no.”

Traficanti said a “purchase item” regarding the former call center could be on today’s commissioners agenda. Traficanti noted that the renovations that would be required at the former call center would be “huge.”

When Rimedio Righetti was asked Wednesday about the former call center, she said Betras called her a couple of weeks ago and asked her to come look at the problems the board of elections has with the Oakhill building, so she did. She agreed with Betras that the conditions are not acceptable.

“That building is old. We need to look at moving ahead,” she said. “If we have the opportunity at a (reasonable) amount of money to get something like that Patriot building, why wouldn’t we do that?”

She added the county offices that would be moving to the former call center would be the building inspection department and county planning commission, which are both in the county’s building on Westchester Drive in Austintown, and the lead abatement office, which is in the county administration building.

“We’re looking at all different things. We’re not saying we are moving everything at this point out of Oakhill,” Rimedio Righetti said. “We’re saying we need to move ahead and get people in offices that are in the 21st Century and not have them in an office that has oxygen plugs still in them.” The Oakhill building is the former South Side Hospital.

She said the county board of elections brought its board of directors to tour the former call center building on Patriot Drive. “They like it,” she said. “You’ll hear Betras tomorrow. He’ll say he’s all in,” she said Wednesday.

She said agencies outside of county government also could go into the former call center, which she said is in good shape on the inside.

Rimedio Righetti said the legislation on today’s agenda will be to pass the funds to the port authority, which purchased the building.