YOUNGSTOWN — City council’s zoning committee is recommending the legislative body vote to add plasma centers to the list of businesses in Youngstown with a moratorium placed on it.

The committee discussed the plasma center moratorium Monday — the second such discussion in as many months.

“Our goal with the moratoriums is for us to build a program to have businesses…that have an issue in our community that they come to the city first” for permission to open, said Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd and zoning committee chairwoman. “There is still an avenue if they come to the city and talk to us.”

Council next meets Feb. 5.

City council voted June 20 through resolutions — then had to rescind them July 29 and pass them as ordinances — to place moratoriums until May 1, 2026, on recreational marijuana businesses, dollar stores, car lots and auto repair shops.

The council zoning committee met a number of times to discuss those moratoriums before the votes.

The plasma moratorium would be through Jan. 1, 2027, if approved by council.

“This is not to stop commerce from coming into the city,” Turner said. “This is just so we have time and space to work on the progress.”

There are three plasma centers in Youngstown — two of them within a mile of each other — along with ones nearby in Liberty and Austintown.

Hospitals would be exempt from the moratorium such as the one at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.

Jason Small, a senior assistant law director, said the plasma moratorium is similar to the ones previously passed by city council last year.

“Their saturation is at or slightly above where we are as a geographic region,” he said.

LANDMARK COMMISSION

For the third straight month, the zoning committee also discussed the creation of a landmark district commission Monday that would give the city more control over historic buildings.

The language is expected to be finalized at the committee’s next meeting, Feb. 24, and then recommended to council to take action, Turner said.

A proposed ordinance, written by the law department, would establish city landmarks and landmark districts to provide protection “by requiring thorough study of alternatives to incompatible alterations or demolition before such acts are performed.”

A seven-member commission would be established with “a commitment to historic preservation with a determination to maintain and safeguard the quality of city landmarks and landmark districts,” the proposed legislation reads.

While the commission proposal was initially discussed about five years ago and was tabled, it was revived because of the May 28 gas explosion and subsequent demolition of the former Realty Tower downtown.

A commission could permit the city to do due diligence on historic buildings before they are demolished though it’s uncertain what could be done to stop the demolition of a historic building in Realty’s case.

The explosion caused significant damage to Realty Tower on East Federal Street, killing Akil Drake, who worked at the Chase Bank on the building’s ground floor, and injuring nine others.

Building owner YO Properties 47 LLC, over the objections of some council members, decided June 17 to demolish the 23-apartment structure. Work started almost a month later and was finished Sept. 25.

Not all of downtown would be in a landmark district, Turner said, but historic buildings would be part of it.

Also, the discussion was to declare all of Fifth Avenue, Arlington Avenue, Handel’s Neighborhood and areas surrounding Wick, Crandall and Mill Creek parks as landmark districts.

The city law department will provide the complete list of proposed districts and buildings at the zoning committee’s meeting next month.