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Activists Lobby for Aid to Preserve YS&T Apartments
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A set of apartments in Campbell that in the heyday of the steel industry provided homes for dozens of workers and their families could play the same role for the oil and gas industry, a group of historic preservationists contend.
The Iron Soup Historical Preservation Co. is lobbying for the preservation of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company Homes in Campbell not only to potentially house workers for oil and gas companies such as Hilcorp Energy and NiSource Gas Transmission and Storage, but as a potential tourist attraction as well. Constructed in 1918, its179 units are the first modern apartments, said Linda Gens, Iron Soup’s executive director.
Advocates for preserving the apartments carried signs and walked in front of the Mahoning County Court House to call attention to the effort Thursday morning.
“It’s an endangered national historic site,” Gens remarked. “Our nonprofit has acquired 21 units right now that we’re trying to bring to tenancy. That’s the first step.” The effort has community and government support “but we can’t seem to get any major funding so we’re making a callout today to Nilcorp and NiSource,” which both have oil and gas leases in Campbell, she said. “They need worker housing and the original intent of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube homes was to house workers,” she pointed out.
Historical sites across the country are doing “quite well” in terms of providing jobs, improving the economy and bringing in tax revenues for communities, said Tim Sokoloff, Iron Soup’s president. Iron Soup points to such examples as Roscoe Village, which brought $42 million to Coshocton County’s economy in 2009, and Zoar Village, an Ohio community founded in 1817 that has been preserved and attracts tens of thousands of visitors annually.
“I don’t see why we can’t do it here,” he said. “We have the historical site. It’s a big one, 6.5 acres. It’s well worth saving, especially with the opportunity to house workers for Hilcorp.”
Sokoloff and Gens already live in units there. “That gives us a unique position to understand the plight of the neighborhood as well,” she said.
Costs for repairing the individual units vary, but Sokoloff estimated that repairs overall would only cost about $500,000. About 30% of the units already are habitable “and it wouldn’t be hard to get the rest of them up to standards,” he said. “They’re solid concrete. They’re good, solid buildings still after almost 100 years,” he added.
“Some of them needs roofs fixed and others don’t,” Gens said. “It’s a little bit easier to do them because they’re not wooden construction. … It’s just a matter of scraping and painting them and wiring them and the plumbing and making them nice.”
Iron Soup has a partnership with Home Depot, which has donated materials to the preservation effort, she said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.