YOUNGSTOWN — A judge ruled that Youngstown intentionally failed and refused to provide requested evidence to Carrier Services Group, the last tenant at 20 Federal Place that is seeking more than $500,000 in damages from the city in an eviction lawsuit.

Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court ordered the city on Monday to provide “proper response” to CSG within 14 days as well as pay attorney fees and costs incurred to seek the information.

In all, Sweeney sided with CSG on seven requests in the ongoing lawsuit filed May 11, 2023, by Youngstown after the company refused to leave the city-owned building.

The city states it properly evicted CSG after Sweeney ruled Dec. 6 that it was permitted to do so and any damage that occurred was the responsibility of the company because it refused to remove items while a $7.65 million remediation project occurred at the downtown building at 20 W. Federal St.

Because of the work, the city removed and damaged CSG’s fiber optic lines, computer servers and equipment when the company wouldn’t remove them.

City officials said the fiber optic line and the power were cut, and Carrier didn’t notice 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.

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, Magistrate Dennis J. Sarisky ruled Aug. 23 and Sweeney upheld Dec. 6.

Sweeney ruled Monday that the city failed to properly respond to CSG’s requests for information regarding who authorized the 20 Federal Place contractors to cut the company’s fiber optic lines, electric lines as well as tear out and remove the walls.

“The response that it was a ‘collective decision’ is” not acceptable,” Sweeney wrote.

Sweeney ruled that the city has to provide CSG an explanation for why it continued to send yearly invoices to CSG even though the lease was not validly renewed. She also ruled that the city has to provide CSG information regarding its billing to the company.

Stephen Pruneski, CSG’s attorney, argues 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 contractor assisting with 20 Federal Place tenants.

Sarisky agreed with city officials in his Aug. 23 decision that only the three-member board of control can renew leases and that wasn’t done with Carrier.

Sweeney ruled the city’s attorneys “acted with intent and malice” when they knowingly included 650 pages of “spam emails that contain the word ‘carrier'” when it responded to a CSG document request. In all, the city gave CSG 1,295 pages of documents with more than half being spam, Sweeney ruled.

“The court finds that the city’s conduct in providing these non-responsive and irrelevant documents violated the civil rules and entitles CSG for sanctions for attorney’s fees incurred in reviewing those documents and determining that they had no involvement in the case,” she wrote.

Sweeney also ruled against the city’s claims that it doesn’t have to provide communications with an expert witness “because they are protected by attorney-client privilege and attorney work product.”

Sweeney ordered the city to provide communications between it and MS Consultants Inc., the project’s engineer, and Daniel A. Terreri & Sons Inc. “regarding the decision to completely destroy and remove the walls and doors to the leased premises, which is the subject of the lawsuit.”

She sided with CSG regarding getting documents from the city regarding the property leased by the company.

The city stated CSG would already have those documents.

“This response is improper,” Sweeney wrote. “CSG is entitled to receive a copy of any and all documents in the city’s possession regarding communications with CSG regardless of whether CSG may or may not already have possession of it. Furthermore, these documents are public records and CSG also made a proper public records request to the city which was ignored.”

Most of the work to 20 Federal Place, which started in April 2023, is done.

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.

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

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 unsuccessfully tried to sell the building in the past and is seeking a redeveloper for it now.

Without the city’s knowledge, Desmone Architects, a Pittsburgh firm involved in planning the redevelopment of 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.

Under historic tax credit rules, a government entity, like Youngstown, isn’t eligible for those dollars and the money must be awarded to a private group.

The Desmone documentation estimates the cost of the entire 20 Federal Place project at $82,137,690, according to information provided by the Ohio Department of Development.

A Desmone umbrella organization, 20 Federal Place LLC, has a 40-year lease on the building, but there are benchmarks in the lease that must be achieved or the city can rescind the lease.

Desmone took a potential redeveloper of the building on a tour of the building a few months ago.

Have an interesting story? Contact David Skolnick by email at dskolnick@vindy.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.