YOUNGSTOWN — City council voted to permit the board of control to start seeking requests for proposals starting Thursday for the purchase and redevelopment of 20 Federal Place.

The city is finishing a $7.6 million asbestos remediation and partial demolition project at the downtown building at 20 W. Federal Street. The city received a $6.9 million state grant for the work.

Also, Desmone Architects, a Pittsburgh firm helping the city with the building, received a $10 million state historic preservation tax credit, announced Dec. 21, for the building. That credit also comes with a $14 million federal historic preservation tax credit.

Council voted Monday to permit proposals to be sought starting Thursday with a Sept. 16 deadline to submit them, said Doug Rasmussen, CEO and managing principal of Steadfast City Economic & Community Partners, a St. Louis firm assisting the city.

“We’re hoping to get responses and we’ll review and interview in September and October,” he said.

The plan is for city council to hear presentations from finalists at its Nov. 20 meeting and have a decision by the end of the month, Rasmussen said.

The end of the month is also the Thanksgiving holiday. Rasmussen said Nov. 30, which is a Saturday, is a “placeholder” date and a decision could come right before Thanksgiving or right after it.

“The project is more attractive to a redeveloper three years later,” he said. “The building has been remediated of hazardous materials through a state grant, the building is more readily available with no tenants and there are state and federal historical tax credits. That’s a great jumping-off point for a redeveloper to take a hard run at the building.”

The city received two proposals to buy and redevelop the building in June 2021 with Downtown Development Group in Warren, the only company that submitted a timely proposal, withdrawing from consideration a month later after expressing concerns about too many unknowns and management of the building.

That left Desmone Architects, which submitted a proposal after the initial deadline, as the only firm interested in the project.

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

Desmone’s application to the state lists an $82.1 million project for 20 Federal Place though no project has been finalized with a redeveloper being sought.

The city purchased the downtown building at 20 W. Federal St. 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, the 332,000-square-foot building was the flagship location of Strouss’ department store for many decades.

The plan for requests for proposals attached to council’s agenda, provided last week, listed old dates of June 7 to issue the requests with a July 14 deadline. Both dates have passed. Rasmussen said the old proposal attached to the agenda was an oversight.

FIREFIGHTER CONTRACT

City council on Monday ratified a three-year contract with its firefighters union that includes a 2.5% raise retroactive to Jan. 1, a 2.5% raise effective Jan. 1, 2025, and then a 4% raise starting Jan. 1, 2026.

The 4% raise is the largest for a city union in decades.

The union overwhelmingly approved the contract June 27 and is pleased with the deal, Jon Racco, fire union president, said.

“Fair compensation and language to address working conditions were top priorities,” he said.

The union has spent more than a year working without a contract as the old one expired May 31, 2023.

The contract begins June 1, 2023, and runs through May 31, 2026.

The two sides were headed to binding arbitration when the deal was reached.

In addition to the raises, the union members will each receive $850 supplemental services pay for performing additional duties such as helping with responding to all motor vehicle accidents, life alerts and assisting the city’s ambulance services.

Annual hazardous duty pay is going from $805 to $820 retroactive to January, then to $850 on Jan. 1, 2025, and then to $1,000 on Jan. 1, 2026.

The uniform allowance is going up $50 annually for each of the three years. The current amount is $1,200.

Also, those who are emergency medical technicians were paid $200 annually and paramedics were paid $300. Those amounts will go up to $500 and $1,000, respectively, with the ratification of the contract.

Overtime, which has been a longstanding issue with the union, is addressed in the contract, but not until the start of 2026.

Effective Jan. 1, 2026, “all hours paid except sick leave shall be considered hours worked for purposes for determining overtime eligibility. At the same time, the language in the agreement … limiting the ability to be eligible for overtime work, would be made null and void.”

One issue the firefighters union wanted was minimum staffing requiring that the number of members could not go below 115. The number is currently 116, but there’s no guarantee that the number will remain at that level.

The starting annual salary for firefighters will go from $38,835 to $39,806. For battalion chiefs, annual salary will go from $79,601 to $81,591 and firefighters at the top of the scale will go from $60,548 to $62,062 annually.

In the last three-year contract, the firefighters got a 1% raise in 2021, 2% in 2022 and 2.5% in 2023.

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