Purple Cat looking to expand downtown Youngstown

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The owner of a downtown agency that provides job skills and education to the mentally and physically impaired is looking to expand to a long-vacant West Federal Street building.

Jimmy Sutman, who founded and has run the Purple Cat since 2003, needs additional space and has a tentative agreement to buy the Kress Building, 111 W. Federal St., from the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp.

For the deal to be finalized, Sutman said he’d need a $1.2 million Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit and a Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund grant of about $750,000. The historic tax credit announcement is expected Dec. 31, he said.

The city’s board of control agreed Tuesday to hire Brownfield Restoration Group LLC for $5,000 to write the Clean Ohio grant. The state will announce those receiving Clean Ohio grants in January, said T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s economic development director.

The Purple Cat provides job skills, daily living skills and recreational activities for about 125 mentally and physically impaired people. The agency is based out of the Rica Building at 117 S. Champion St. and also operates out of the Pearl Street Mission on the city’s East Side and a 52-acre farm in Coitsville.

Renovating the Kress Building, vacant since the early 1990s would cost about $3.5 million to $5 million, Sutman said.

“The building is in such bad shape it’s tough to get an accurate estimate,” he said.

The building’s facade and its steel skeleton are in good shape, but the rest of the structure would need to be replaced, he said.

The plan, Sutman said, would be to use the second floor of the Kress Building for Purple Cat services.

The third floor would have five apartments for 20 mentally and physically impaired people to live with the ground floor used as a vegetable or fruit market or for office space, he said.

If everything goes according to schedule, the renovation work would begin next year and be done no later than early 2013, he said.

Sutman has worked for the past two years with the CIC, a nonprofit downtown property agency, on a deal for the Kress Building.

The Kress Building sought state historic tax credits in July, but lost to the Wells Building, another CIC-owned property at 201 W. Federal St.

The state gave a $1 million tax credit for the Wells project. Strollo Architects plans to invest about $4 million to buy and rehabilitate the structure, vacant for about a decade, and turn it into office and retail space. Strollo will also relocate its office at the city-owned 20 Federal Place building to Wells.