City Leases Masters Building to Health-Care Startup
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Work should get underway in the next week or two on converting the former Masters Tuxedo building on Market Street into a training center for nurses’ aides, says the operator of the startup school.
Corey Kemp, a registered nurse and Youngstown resident, expects Allied Health Training LLC to be operating in early 2015, he said. Assuming no delays in obtaining necessary permits, work on the building should take six to eight months, he predicted.
At its meeting Thursday morning, the Youngstown Board of Control approved a lease agreement with Kemp for the property, initially the site of the former Paul Morris Sporting Goods.
Kemp, who has committed to make improvements totaling about $72,000, will pay $10 per month for the property, which is in the city’s land bank. After a year, if Kemp has lived up to his end of the agreement, he will have the option to purchase the building for $10.
The improvements will bring the building up to code, said Tom DeAngelo, city economic development coordinator, who has been working with Kemp on the project. The upgrades will address the building’s crumbling brick façade, plumbing and heating, ventilation and cooling systems, he said.
The city Design Review Committee approved Kemp’s plans for the building, which had been slated for demolition, in February.
Those plans call for initially renovating about 5,000 square feet of the 23,690-square-foot building, which the city acquired in December 2010.
In addition to nurses aid training, Allied will offer training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and basic life support, along with other educational health certifications, Kemp said.
“We will also have a free nursing resource center to assist in resume building, job interview skills building and nursing licensure study groups to be held on Saturdays,” he continued.
The project will remediate a long vacant and decaying property on “an important corridor for the city,” as Mayor John McNally described it.
“It has been sitting there for a while,” McNally said. “We’re happy to give Mr. Kemp a chance to get that building up and running as a nurses training center and looking forward to having a viable business in the city in that location. It is a good location.”
If Kemp’s project isn’t successful, the city likely will move forward on demolishing the building, McNally said. “We certainly don’t want to tear the building down but over the long term we can’t have that building empty,” he remarked.
Pictured: Vacant Masters Tuxedo Building, February 2014.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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