Youngstown City Council Considers Funding Already Completed Sewer Work

YOUNGSTOWN — Mayor Jamael Tito Brown’s administration will ask the City Council Wednesday to allow the Board of Control to pay $321,778 for an emergency downtown sewer replacement that began more than five months ago and is now complete.

During an improvement project on Commerce Street between Phelps and Market Streets, a large sinkhole was discovered March 29, said Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy public works director.

“We looked further and discovered that there were bricks missing from the sanitary sewer line, and that the line, which is over 100 years old, had major problems,” he said. “We decided to get rid of the brick line and replace it.”

Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co., the Youngstown company that did the road improvements, did the sewer replacement work, Shasho said.

About 400 feet of 30-inch brick sanitary sewer lines were replaced with polyvinyl chloride lines along with three manholes, Shasho said.

“We would like to replace the sewers as we go from street to street, but we would be ruined if we did that,” he said.

The $321,778 cost “isn’t bad for 400 feet” of sewer line, Shasho said.

The Commerce Street Improvement Project was part of the SMART2 (Strategic and Sustainable, Medical and Manufacturing, Academic and Arts, Residential and Recreation, and Technology and Training) program that began more than four years ago. It is a $27.65 million project on several downtown streets that began in July 2020 and received $10.85 million in federal funding.

SMART2 work on Commerce Street was halted a few months ago due to an issue with 20 Federal Place, a city-owned building that faces the street from the back.

During a $7.4 million project on the nine-story building, which included asbestos remediation and partial demolition, damage to the floor and walls of the top two floors was found. There were concerns that parts of the building would collapse, so that section of the street was closed and work was halted, Shasho said.

A $175,000 project to repair the breach in the wall is expected to be completed next week, Shasho said.

After that, Marucci & Gaffney will complete the Commerce Street improvement project, Shasho said. All that remains is curbing and sidewalks on the south side of the street and paving, he said. That work should be completed next month, Shasho said.

There are still two parts of the SMART2 project to complete after Commerce Street, Shasho said.

One of them is a work from the former 13-story Realty Tower building, which was badly damaged in a gas explosion on May 28 and its subsequent demolition.

The last remaining portion of the Realty building — four floors of a stairwell — was dismantled Thursday. The site will now be filled in first with dirt and then with gravel to turn it into a parking lot, at least temporarily.

The extent of the improvement work will not be known until the site is cleaned up, Shasho said.

But the damaged street, sidewalk, island, curbs and streetlights will need to be repaired, Shasho said. The goal, he said, is to complete the work by November.

The other is a $682,097, 10-seat self-driving bus that was a condition of getting the federal grant.

The final touches are being made to the bus, which should be on the road before the end of the year.

The contract with Transdev Services of Lombard, Illinois, for the autonomous electric bus includes providing a driver for the airport shuttle-sized vehicle for the first six months of operation.

State law requires that someone be behind the wheel of all buses, even those that drive themselves.

After the six months, the city can pay Transdev extra for a driver, integrate the bus into the city’s fleet or turn it over to the Western Reserve Transit Authority. The WRTA has its own 10-seat autonomous bus.

Mahoning Avenue

Wednesday’s agenda also includes a request to increase funding from $3.6 million to $4.1 million for a resurfacing project on Mahoning Avenue, from Meridian Road to the Interstate 680 interchange, about 2 miles, which also includes new catch basins, curbs, sidewalks and signs.

The project is getting a boost because Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, agreed to allocate $400,000 from his district’s American Rescue Plan fund to pay for additional sidewalk improvements and other safety upgrades along the main West Side corridor.

The remainder of the increase is leftover funding for sidewalk improvements from the 5th Ward’s ARP allocation when State Rep. Lauren McNally represented it in 2022.

The remainder of the project’s costs will come from federal and state funding, Shasho said.

A contractor could be chosen as early as Sept. 26 by the control board, Shasho said.

Work on catch basins, curbs and sidewalks will be done over the winter, Shasho said. But the repaving project will have to wait until spring, he added.

The project is one of three, worth a total of $10.5 million, on Mahoning Avenue.

A $1.7 million project to install new traffic lights at 10 intersections on the road between Meridian Road and Oak Hill Avenue will be completed later this year.

Significant progress was also made on a $4.5 million water main project on Mahoning Avenue.

This project involves replacing a water main between Belle Vista and Lakeview Avenues as well as replacing water lines, many of which contain lead, in approximately 300 homes on the street south of Mahoning Avenue.

This project should be completed soon.

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