YOUNGSTOWN — The completion date of the Youngstown City Hall fire escape replacement project — which has been pushed back numerous times — should be done by next month, a city official said.

“Definitely next month,” Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works, said Monday about the project being finished.

The old fire escape was shut down March 9, 2023, because of structural problems that continued to escalate. That has resulted in city council not meeting in its chambers on the building’s sixth floor for the past 16 months.

Shasho said Monday that in hindsight, the city should have taken its time to have the project properly designed rather than having it designed and followed shortly by work.

“When you don’t have a good, well-planned-out design, it takes time,” he said. “We should have gotten the design done and then bid it out. They didn’t have a good design, but we didn’t have time to design first. If it wasn’t detrimental to the city to not have a fire escape, we would have done it differently. It also would have been done quicker.”

Shasho said he is not blaming MS Consultants Inc. for the design work.

“It’s not their fault,” he said. “It’s the process. We’re designing something as we build it. We’re trying to get it done as quickly as possible. We’re just winging it, trying to get it done.”

The project hasn’t gone smoothly from the start — and there is more bad news.

The elevator at the police station, which is attached to city hall, isn’t working, making that building no longer handicapped accessible until it is repaired.

“They’re having problems with getting parts” for the elevator at the police station, Shasho said.

Kevin Flinn, the city’s buildings and grounds commissioner, didn’t respond Monday to requests for comment on the elevator problems.

The new fire escape for city hall is being fabricated off site and should be brought to the building later this month, Shasho said.

“The foundation is ready to go,” he said. “They’ll start installing (the fire escape) this month and it should go really quick.”

The city was waiting for the concrete foundation to harden because it has to support the metal fire escape and it is ready, Shasho said.

The new fire escape won’t have a drop-down ladder and instead will have stairs leading to the ground so additional work will be needed to the rear police department parking lot. Police cars drove under the old fire escape, but won’t be able to do that when the new one is installed, Shasho said.

Based on Shasho’s recommendation because of additional expenses, city council agreed Dec. 20 to increase the project’s cost from $1.1 million to $1.4 million.

Shasho said Monday that the final cost should be at $1.4 million, but there could be additional expenses for landscaping.

Shasho said in May that the project would be done in June, but the completion date is now sometime next month.

The project was delayed other times earlier this year because of numerous issues.

That included additions to the project, the city having to resolve concerns from the Mahoning County Building Department about the safety of those inside city hall between the time the old fire escape was dismantled months ago and when a new one will be installed, concerns about the foundation and problems with the measurement on the structure that will connect the fire escape to emergency doors on each floor of city hall that didn’t match.

Employees of AO Construction and Restoration, the project’s subcontractor, were working Monday on the fire escape location.

The work included removing sections of granite to provide a more even surface to install the fire escape that will be closer to the building than the old one, said Angel Ortiz, AO’s owner.

That work will take about a week to 10 days, Ortiz said, and includes moving the top emergency door so it aligns vertically with the other emergency doors that lead to the fire escape on city hall, Ortiz said.

There was initial debate between replacement and repairing the fire escape after a Feb. 3, 2023, inspection report determined the fire escape was inoperable. Fire Chief Barry Finley decided March 9, 2023, that the fire escape would be shut down until work to it could be finished.

Council voted April 19 to spend up to $250,000 for repair work and designs to the fire escape though Shasho said that amount was never going to be the final cost. At that time, work was to be finished in a few months.

But after Murphy Contracting Co. of Youngstown did repair work, including cleaning and sandblasting the fire escape of bird droppings and rust, it was decided in July that it would be better to replace rather than repair the aging fire escape even though it would be more expensive.

City council voted July 31 to allow up to $1.1 million to be spent on the project, including work already done by Murphy and designs by MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown.

That moved the completion date to January.

But after more problems were discovered, council agreed Dec. 20 to raise the project’s cost to $1.4 million. Work didn’t even start until January — four months behind schedule — and moved the completion date to late February or early March.

Additional issues — including the fire escape’s measurements and that changes were needed so the structure would connect to the emergency doors — delayed the completion date to mid-May. Further delays moved the completion to mid-June, and even more issues have now pushed it to August.

Since the fire escape was closed in March 2023, city council hasn’t met on city hall’s sixth floor, where its chambers and caucus room are located.

The concern has been that too many members of the public attend council meetings and it would be dangerous to hold them on the sixth floor.

Council meetings have been held for the past 16 months at either the Covelli Centre community room or the Mahoning County commissioners’ meeting room with the finance committee meeting the same day at the same location starting beforehand.

Other council committee meetings and city bodies also meet elsewhere on lower floors in city hall or off-site such as the Eugenia Atkinson Recreation Center.

The board of control has continued to meet on the sixth floor in the council caucus room.

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