YOUNGSTOWN — The city asked a judge to dismiss an amended lawsuit filed against additional parties — including the mayor — by Carrier Services Group, which is seeking more than $500,000 for damage to its property and equipment when it was evicted from 20 Federal Place.

Carrier, a technology company, was the last remaining tenant at the city-owned downtown building at 20 W. Federal St.

Maureen Sweeney, a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge, on Dec. 6 upheld the Aug. 23 decision of Magistrate Dennis J. Sarisky that Youngstown could evict Carrier as long as it gave the company 30 days notice as required under its expired lease. The city said the eviction notice has since been given.

Still to be resolved is if damages will be awarded.

The building is undergoing a $7 million asbestos abatement and partial demolition project to be finished next month. Because of that, the city removed and damaged Carrier’s fiber optic lines, computer servers and equipment when the company refused to remove them.

Carrier on Jan. 8 added to its lawsuit against the city: Mayor Jamael Tito Brown; Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works; Jim Murray, the project’s engineer; MS Consultants Inc., the project’s manager; and Daniel A. Terreri & Sons, the project’s contractor.

In a Wednesday response, Adam Buente, the city’s senior assistant law director, asked that the case be dismissed, judgment be awarded in favor of the defendants as well as “any other relief it deems just and equitable.”

Buente’s filing was on behalf of Brown, Shasho and Murray.

Buente wrote: “Carrier failed to mitigate its damages by intentionally leaving a purported $500,000 worth of equipment in a commercial building undergoing an approximate ($7 million) brownfield remediation. Such conduct was not objectively reasonable given the fact that almost every other tenant at 20 Federal voluntarily left the premises within months of the announcement of the brownfield grant award” in June 2022.

Buente additionally wrote: “Carrier’s continued insistence that it properly renewed the lease agreement contradicts this court’s express rulings to the contrary, which held that Carrier did not validly renew its lease because it failed to timely submit its renewal.”

The city, he wrote, asserts the damages “may be the result of abuse, neglect, modification and / or alteration” by Carrier and so the company isn’t entitled to its request for more than $500,000.

In a Jan. 8 filing seeking to add the others to the lawsuit, Stephen J. Pruneski, Carrier’s attorney, wrote: “Instead of attempting to properly terminate (Carrier’s) leasehold interest in the property, whether by negotiation or proper legal process, the city embarked on a purposeful, intentional and malicious plan to cause the removal of (Carrier) from the premises.”

That includes, according to Pruneski’s filing, allowing construction debris to damage Carrier’s computer equipment, cutting the fiber optic line, cutting off the power supply to the premises causing Carrier’s equipment to operate on battery power until the batteries failed, destroying office walls and doors, and damaging and removing Carrier’s equipment.

City officials said the fiber optic line and the power were cut and Carrier didn’t notice either for about two weeks and it was more than a week after the equipment was moved to the city’s traffic engineering building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard before the company realized that occurred.

Sarisky denied Carrier’s request for a temporary restraining order to restore possession of its office at 20 Federal Place because the city didn’t violate the lease agreement and to have the company return to its space “is an impossibility” because it “no longer exists due to constructions and renovations by the city.”

Sarisky wrote Carrier’s “remedy is damages, at this point, for the destruction of the leased premises.”

A Dec. 20 hearing was canceled when Carrier added parties to the lawsuit. A status meeting is scheduled for Feb. 2.

Carrier hasn’t had a valid lease since Sept. 30, 2020, when an old contract expired, and the company failed to renew on a timely basis, Sarisky ruled Aug. 23 and Sweeney upheld Dec. 6.

Pruneski argued the city accepted payments from the company for renewals for 2021 and 2022 and that Carrier paid yearly and not monthly for nine years.

Invoices for 2021, 2022 and 2023 were given to Carrier by Joyce Gorsky, who worked for the city as an independent contract assisting with 20 Federal Place tenants.

Sarisky agreed with city officials that only the three-member board of control can renew leases and that wasn’t done with Carrier.

The city filed the Carrier lawsuit May 11 after the company refused to leave.

There were 19 tenants, taking up about 20% of the 332,000-square-foot building before eviction notices were sent in July 2022. Some of the tenants received extensions.

Many of the former 20 Federal Place tenants found other locations while some went out of business.

The city permitted Carrier to remain the longest of any of the tenants but sought to evict it Jan. 3, 2023.

The city received a $6.96 million Ohio Brownfield Remediation grant, announced June 2022, for the remediation and partial demolition at the downtown building.

The city provided $2.32 million of its own money for the project, largely for architectural designs, project management and costs related to trying to seek additional grants for the building.

Without the city’s knowledge, Desmone Architects, a Pittsburgh company involved in plans for the building, reapplied and received a $10 million state historic preservation tax credit for 20 Federal Place, announced Dec. 21. That also comes with $14 million in federal historic preservation tax credits.

Desmone’s application to the state stated an $82,137,690 project is planned at 20 Federal Place though no project has been finalized and a redeveloper hasn’t been found.

The city purchased the building in November 2004 after Phar-Mor, a national retail store company, went out of business. The property was the Phar-Mor Centre, the company’s corporate headquarters. Before that, it was the flagship location of Strouss’ department store for several decades.

The city has tried unsuccessfully to sell the building in the past.