Staff file photo.... The Gallagher Building in downtown Youngstown is projected to be the site of a new 36-unit apartment complex. It formerly held the Cedar's Lounge and Restaurant.

YOUNGSTOWN – The owner of the vacant downtown Gallagher Building said he plans to start work on 36 apartment units in it later this year.

Brian Angelilli, owner of YO Properties 23 LLC, said he expects work to start on the apartments in August or September, possibly sooner. For decades, the building housed Cedar’s Lounge.

“These are efficiency apartments, not even complete one bedroom,” Angelilli told the city’s board of zoning appeals Tuesday. “They’re intended, for the most part, for single occupants.”

He added: “It’s a great project. We’re looking forward to hopefully everything we need getting underway this year.”

Angelilli was granted a variance Tuesday by the board to reduce the required number of parking spaces for the tenants of the apartments from 72, which would be two for each unit, to 24.

“The 24 is a minimum,” he said.

He added tenants would also have access to a parking deck a couple of blocks away from the building, located at 131 W. Commerce and 23 N. Hazel streets.

At a May 5, 2020, city design review committee meeting, Angelilli said work would begin on the apartments that year.

“I’m excited to see this project move forward,” Nikki Posterli, director of the city’s community planning and economic development department and the mayor’s chief of staff, said Tuesday. “We’ve had many discussions on this.”

At the meeting last year, Angelilli said he wanted to put a restaurant on the ground floor. He said Tuesday that there are plans for retail space on the ground floor.

Angelilli is the building’s third owner in about seven years who has attempted to develop the building. Angelilli’s company obtained it Jan. 24, 2019, in exchange for paying property taxes owed by the previous owner, according to the Mahoning County Auditor’s office.

It was previously owned by 131 Commerce LLC, operated by Ryan Sheridan, who bought it Jan. 10, 2017, for $280,000. Sheridan was sentenced in January 2020 to seven and a half years in federal prison on 60 convictions in a $24.5 million insurance-fraud scheme at his now-closed Braking Point Recovery Center.

Before that, the Gatta Co. — owned by Dominic L. Gatta Jr. and Dominic L. Gatta III — purchased the property for $192,500 on Sept. 17, 2012.

The company evicted Cedar’s, a longtime tenant, from the building, shortly after the purchase. The structure has been vacant ever since.

The Gattas said in 2014 they planned to spend about $6 million to turn the building into a brew-pub on the first floor with offices and apartments on the upper three floors.

Sheridan said he planned to spend about $4 million for a restaurant, retail space and apartments.

Neither project happened.

The building was erected in 1904 and used by the John Gallagher Co. as a liquor wholesale business until 1920.

Angelilli also owns the Realty Towers Apartments, 47 Central Federal St., buying it for $2 million on June 1, 2018, as well as the vacant Legal Arts Building, 101 Market St. He purchased the property, vacant for 17 years, on Oct. 10, 2019, for $400,000.

He said in January that he planned to reopen Legal Arts, possibly with a breakfast-lunch business on the ground floor as well as residential apartments or a boutique hotel.

dskolnick@vindy.com