Staff file photo / Ed Runyan ... Downtown Youngstown was in chaos in the immediate aftermath of the Realty Tower explosion May 28.

TOP TEN STORIES OF 2024

10 Total solar eclipse captivates attention.

9 New economic development group, Lake to River, forms.

8 Property tax hikes

confuse residents.

7 The family of murdered Rowan Sweeney’ finally gets justice.

6 Litigation continued over the Mill Creek MetroParks deer reduction plan.

5 Bill Johnson’s first year as president of YSU brought turbulence but growth.

4 Historic contract signed at Ultium Cells.

3 Mahoning Valley hospitals recover from threat of closing.

2 Republicans sweep local elections.

1.Realty Tower explosion leaves downtown in chaos for months.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is No. 1 of the Top 10 stories of the year as voted on by newsroom staff.

YOUNGSTOWN — A gas explosion at the former Realty Tower that killed one and injured nine caused such extensive damage that the downtown Youngstown apartment building was demolished and forced two nearby buildings and streets to be closed for months.

A final report by the National Transportation Safety Board on the cause of the May 28 explosion that also rattled nearby buildings won’t be done until a year or two from the date of the blast.

But an NTSB preliminary report states a four-person scrap-metal crew, engaged by GreenHeart Companies of Boardman – owned by Brian Angelili, managing partner of Realty’s YO Properties 47 LLC – was working in a basement area underneath the 13-story building’s sidewalk removing old utility lines when a crew member sawed three times into a pipe mistakenly believing it to not have natural gas in it.

The explosion killed Akil Drake, who was working at the Chase Bank branch on the building’s ground floor, and injured nine others.

The Youngstown Board of Control hired GreenHeart for $140,133 without seeking bids to handle the utility line relocation at Realty because Angelili owned the building and the company, which does construction, and thought it would be easier for GreenHeart to do the job, Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, said.

The explosion caused the evacuation of all 23 apartments at Realty Tower on the city’s Central Square, with those tenants leaving their belongings behind, never to return to their homes.

The city also ordered the immediate closing of the Stambaugh Building, which houses the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel and a restaurant, on the day of the explosion because of the danger posed by the heavily damaged Realty Tower.

International Towers, which has about 170 tenants, was evacuated June 14, four days after Youngstown city officials got a structural engineering report stating all buildings within a 210-foot radius of Realty Tower should be closed because they’re in a “collapse zone.”

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and other city officials criticized YO Properties for dragging their feet on doing work to the building to secure and then demolish it. YO Properties had announced June 17 it would demolish the building despite some downtown stakeholders urging efforts be made to save it.

Brown on June 24 gave YO Properties until July 5 to take steps to demolish the 101-year-old building or the city would take legal action. YO Properties finally submitted a partial demolition plan July 5 to the Mahoning County Building Department to take down the structure. Work to do so started July 12.

Fire Chief Barry Finley and three firefighters went into the building two days prior to the start of demolition to retrieve some belongings of the tenants that fit in small bags.

The demolition proved to be more challenging than originally expected because of the building’s thick steel frame.

The initial plan was to get the building down to four floors by Aug. 2 so Stambaugh and International Towers could reopen. That goal took until Aug. 19 to achieve.

Moderalli Excavating, which handled the demolition, on July 31 rented a crane that was 225 tons, 240 feet tall and had a 14,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball that sped up the process.

Before that, it used a 90-ton, 190-foot-tall crane with a 5,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball when demolition started. But Gary Moderalli, who owns the contracting company, said that piece of equipment “never broke” a beam.

Shortly after Aug. 19, the hotel reopened and International Towers tenants returned home.

The demolition project was completed Sept. 25, almost 12 weeks after it started, and took twice as long as expected.

YO Properties and LY Property Management Group, which managed Realty Tower, have said the future “development of this site will be an extensive process.” Until then, the site will remain vacant “as we begin the lengthy process of reimagining and planning a new project of this historic site,” the statement read.

The family of Drake, as well as tenants at International Towers and former Realty Tower occupants, have filed lawsuits as a result of the explosion.

Because of extensive damage caused by the explosion and the subsequent demolition of Realty, Market Street in front of the site and East Federal Street from Market to Champion streets, which is between the former Realty Tower and Stambaugh Building, were closed for several months.

It wasn’t until early December that the section of East Federal Street reopened.

The city paid $694,391 for work to the two streets, including repairing the roads, sidewalks, utilities, curb ramps, catch basins, landscaping and electrical upgrades. The landscaping and electrical upgrades still aren’t finished.