The former Ward Bakery on Mahoning Avenue will becoma a U-Haul self-storage complex

YOUNGSTOWN — U-Haul Storage of Youngstown bought the Ward Bakery building, which was used as rental space by artists for decades, and plans to convert it into a self-storage facility.

U-Haul will renovate the building at 1024 Mahoning Ave. and open in spring 2025 with up to 800 climate-controlled storage units with the exterior “preserved to maintain as much of the original character as possible,” according to a Wednesday statement from the company.

The building is located across the street from a U-Haul storage facility and truck rental business at the former Isaly Dairy plant. The plant stopped making ice cream there in 1969. The building was vacant until 1987 when U-Haul bought it.

“We are honored to preserve a second piece of Youngstown’s past while giving it a new purpose,” said Alissa Nider, president of U-Haul Co. of Akron, in the statement. “Our customers needed more self-storage options so we are thrilled to provide another adaptive reuse property that can accommodate the growth we are seeing in Northeast Ohio.”

The company will hire up to six employees for the new location, Nider said.

The building sale was finalized July 22 and announced Wednesday by U-Haul. The sale price wasn’t disclosed Wednesday.

The Mahoning County Auditor’s Office’s website on Wednesday still showed Ward Riverworks LLC, operated by Tamara and James Deeley, as the property’s owners.

Ward Riverworks purchased the property on the lower West Side in the Mahoning Commons area for $220,000 on July 14, 2018.

The dozen or so artists who rented space at Ward — some for decades — were informed in an April 8 letter by the Deeleys that the 101-year-old building was sold and the new owners were evicting them, effective June 10.

“It’s bittersweet; it’s the end of an era,” Gabriel Crish, a photographer who rented space at Ward for 25 years, said on June 10 as he packed up his equipment.

Some artists found other space while others didn’t. Also, LOOP Youngstown — an initiative to develop an arts and culture center in the area — is seeking to open a location, likely in Struthers.

When the notices were sent April 8 it was believed Ward would be turned into storage space.

Ward Bakery closed its business in the 1960s. For about the past 50 years, it was used as rental space for various artists and opened a few times a year to the public for artists to sell their wares though it hasn’t done so since 2022.

In July 2023, the Deeleys told The Vindicator the building could be in danger of closing because of costly upgrades, particularly to the building’s fire sprinkler system.

Tamara Deeley said last year that she and her husband bought the building “as is.”

She said at the time, “Shame on us for not doing more due diligence. But you don’t know what you don’t know. My husband had been a tenant in that building for 33 years at that point. He knew the previous owner. When the previous owner told him, ‘Everything’s good. Here’s the tags because I had it inspected.’ We thought it was good.”

A city fire department inspection on May 26, 2023, turned up 29 violations.

Those issues included the need to replace sprinklers, electrical wiring violations, exposed wiring and other “hazardous electrical conditions,” improper installation of fire extinguishers, obstructed exits, lack of a certificate of occupancy, lack of signs for exits and other “unsafe conditions.”

The most expensive repair at the time was the sprinkler system, which includes switching every pipe in the building from three-fourths of an inch to 1 inch. That alone was going to cost about $212,000, Tamara Deeley said in July 2023.

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