YOUNGSTOWN — A community marketplace is planned for the former Bottom Dollar grocery store site at 2649 Glenwood Ave. that closed nearly nine years ago.

Rose Carter, executive director of ACTION — Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods — said the plan is to expand the organization’s mobile market to the South Side location about three days a week and offer a location for others to sell food and items.

“ACTION’s been pushing for a brick-and-mortar grocery store since 2017, but we’ve been unable to get one to commit,” she said. “We’ve had pop-up markets and the mobile grocery store and we’re going to be expanding and creating a community marketplace.”

The marketplace would probably open in the latter part of 2024, Carter said.

The mobile market, which started in May 2022, is a van that brings grocery store items to those throughout the city.

The community marketplace effort is a collaboration between the city, local businesses, nonprofits and others and is “aimed at nurturing a sense of belonging, fostering community engagement and ensuring access to essential resources for all,” she said.

Carter added: “This space will not only provide immediate relief but also serve as a catalyst for long-term positive change.”

Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, who represents where the property is located, said: “It’s an answer to our discussions of our area being a food desert. This is a starting point. It will be a food market and will address our needs for a grocery store.”

Davis said she plans to give a portion of her ward’s $2 million American Rescue Plan allocation to help the marketplace.

“I’m prepared to help make this a reality,” she said.

Bottom Dollar had three locations in Youngstown. The stores closed in January 2015 after the company was sold to Aldi Inc. The city acquired the Glenwood Avenue property — the former Cleveland Elementary School and a playground — from Aldi.

ONE (Ohio North East) Health Ohio announced in April 2016 that it wanted to buy the 18,000-square-foot building and turn it into a health facility to provide medical, dental and behavioral health services to lower-income people at that location as well as a food distribution site and possibly a pharmacy.

City council approved an agreement a few months later to have the board of control sell the building for $150,000 to ONE Health Ohio.

A development agreement was signed in December 2017 and the building sold to ONE Health Ohio in March 2018. Under the agreement, ONE Health Ohio had two years from December 2017 to open or be required to sell the property back to the city.

The city gave the organization five-plus years before the board of control in June refunded the $150,000 and reclaimed ownership.

In addition to the purchase price, ONE Health Ohio spent $350,000 to demolish the interior portion of the store, landscaping, resurfacing the 62,000-square-foot parking lot, installing entrance gates and exterior work, Dr. Ronald Dwinnells, the agency’s CEO, wrote in a September 2022 letter to Glenwood Neighbors, an organization of businesses and residents on and along Glenwood Avenue.

The COVID-19 pandemic was “a significant cause of delay for this project” as ONE Health Ohio had to reallocate resources that “caused a significant strain in the budgetary structure and our attention,” Dwinnells wrote.

The project’s cost also increased from $4 million to $6 million, he wrote. ONE Health Ohio eventually decided to not do the project.

There have been several projects along the Glenwood Avenue corridor in the past few years including the opening of the Glenwood Business Center, the purchase of the former Foster Art Theatre by the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and business and residential properties undergoing renovations.

The marketplace, Davis said, is “going to add to the revitalization of Glenwood Avenue. I’m excited about it.”