YOUNGSTOWN — City council will consider approving three ordinances Wednesday to spend $377,500 in American Rescue Plan funds to have the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber implement a site readiness program, renovate the former Foster Art Theatre and provide tutoring to under-educated former city school students.

The three proposals were recommended Monday by the finance committee for approval at council’s Wednesday meeting.

The proposal for the chamber contract, sponsored by Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, would give $187,500 to the organization to “produce and implement a strategy that will help spur development in and around the city,” according to the chamber.

It would be a three-year contract with the chamber matching the $187,500 paid by the city.

“These costs will cover software, administrative and subcontracting services deemed necessary by the chamber,” according to the chamber’s proposal.

The chamber would identify acreage and viable buildings for potential development.

“After inventorying all sites and buildings, the chamber will collaborate with property owners and an engineering partner to road map the development of the identified sites,” according to its proposal.

Nikki Posterli, the mayor’s chief of staff and head of the city’s community planning and economic development department, said the city isn’t prepared now to quickly compete for major projects.

“Right now, the process we use in conjunction with the chamber is, we’ll get an email for a business opportunity looking for square footage, a building, freeway access,” she said. “We usually have three to five days to respond and what we find out more so than not (is) we’re not ready. This opportunity will help us.”

The chamber also wrote in its proposal that it would assist with state and local financing and economic development programs “that will mitigate overall costs and outline the feasibility of development.”

RENOVATION

Another ARP funding request, sponsored by Councilwoman Lauren McNally, D-5th Ward, would give $100,000 to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. toward a project to renovate the former Foster Art Theatre at 2504 Glenwood Ave. and convert the old adult movie venue, which is in the 6th Ward, into a location for two commercial units and four apartments.

YNDC bought the building in June 2021 for $99,999 to shut down the theater and eventually redevelop it.

Ian Beniston, YNDC executive director, said the entire project is expected to cost at least $1 million, though a final total hasn’t been determined, and that the work will hopefully start next fall and take about nine months to complete.

“We’re working on other funding sources,” he said.

McNally said it’s part of the city’s ongoing effort to improve the Glenwood Avenue corridor.

The $100,000 “is a small percentage of what they need,” she said.

The theater was built in 1938 and showed mainstream films for years. The theater, which had about 700 seats, began showing art house films in the 1960s and then switched to pornographic movies in the 1970s. In recent years, it also sold XXX-rated videos.

It closed in March 2020 when the state forced all movie theaters to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic and it never reopened.

TUTORING

The third ARP proposal, sponsored by Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, would give $90,000 to the Family Empowerment Student Achievement Institute.

The money would go toward a program to provide tutorial services to under educated former Youngstown school district students who don’t have the “educational tools to be economically viable and qualified to acquire the knowledge, skills and abilities to legally engage in meaningful work to sustain themselves and their families,” according to the ordinance.

City council in April gave itself $14 million — $2 million for each of its seven members — of the city’s ARP funding for work in their wards.

The city’s board of control — consisting of Brown, Law Director Jeff Limbian and Finance Director Kyle Miasek — has to authorize the funding for each of the proposals for them to be implemented.

That has been an issue with board of control members saying they won’t approve council-backed projects unless they are compliant with federal ARP guidelines.

Of the $3.27 million approved so far by council for projects it has approved using its designated ARP allocation, the board has authorized $1.55 million worth of them.

Some council members said Monday they expect to propose a number of other ARP projects at their Dec. 21 meeting — the last regularly scheduled council meeting of the year.

The city received a total of $82,775,370 in ARP funding. City council has allocated about $46 million of it through most hasn’t been spent.

Also recommended Monday for passage by council Wednesday was the $1.7 million payment toward the remaining $3.4 million principal amount owed by the city for the construction of the Covelli Centre.

The city will pay the $1.7 million, with a 4.125 percent interest rate, next month and make the final $1.7 million payment in January 2024, Miasek said.

The city borrowed $11.9 million in 2005 for its share of center’s overall $45 million construction cost.