Staff photo / Dan Pompili The rear of the vacant six-plex at 1893 Oles Ave., Boardman, features boarded-up windows and other damage.

BOARDMAN — The township may soon have a resolution for a longtime eyesore in a Sheridan Road neighborhood.

Officials say residents of Oles Avenue have been complaining about problems with the six-plex apartment building at 1893 Oles Ave. for nearly a decade. While legal matters with the building’s owner are still proceeding through the court system, one township trustee is in a position to make sure the matter is resolved.

Recently elected trustee, Matt Gambrel, has been familiar with the issue since before he took office in January. While he cannot ethically deal with the matter from his seat on the board, he is the one working to ensure the issue is resolved as soon as possible.

“I completely understand what the residents are upset about and why they are frustrated,” he said. “I want this thing done and settled as much as they do. I feel the pressure to get it done quickly for all of the right reasons.”

Gambrel was appointed in 2025 as the representative attorney for Compass Family and Community Services in Youngstown, in the case of its guardianship of Dorothea Wydick, 88, of Canfield.

Wydick is the de facto owner of the property, even though ownership is listed on the Mahoning County Auditor’s website as First National Investments, Inc.

“All of her rental properties here are registered with Boardman Township,” Gambrel said. “She is DBA for the company, and she’s always represented herself as the property owner to Boardman and Canfield.”

Wydick has operated rental properties in both communities for years, but her mental faculties have reportedly declined in recent years to the point that she can no longer manage her own personal affairs, much less operate a rental property business.

Wydick owns two apartment buildings on Oles Avenue, right next to each other. While 1897 Oles Ave. is still occupied by tenants, 1983 Oles Ave. is in disrepair.

Boardman Fire Chief Mark Pitzer has become quite familiar with the building.

“One winter, during COVID, we had calls that there was no heat. The gas was on but there was no water, and when we arrived we found residents heating their apartments with their gas stoves, which was a safety concern for us, of course,” he said. “We worked with the county to get them out of the property and into a better situation.”

Pitzer said his department has been dealing with 1893 Oles Ave. for about five years, and the building became a safety concern for the entire neighborhood.

“It reached a state that we knew was a safety issue and a fire hazard, that people might be in there and get trapped, you had holes in the roof and the walls,” he said. “But we could not find her and serve her with papers, then we learned she was incapacitated. Her family had little involvement, and we had to go through the court system and they had to appoint a guardian.”

That was where Gambrel came in.

The township passed a resolution condemning the property and ordering it razed or repaired, but when Wydick was found to be unable to answer for her own affairs, Compass took over her case and appointed Gambrel to represent them in court on the matter.

The agency filed paperwork to have Wydick declared legally incompetent to manage her affairs. That allows Compass to see that her needs are tended, while also giving it the authority to manage her assets, like the apartment buildings.

Since taking office, Gambrel said, he has not been party to any of the board’s discussions on the matter, and either recuses himself or leaves the room when it is brought up.

But he has done his due diligence as an attorney on the subject.

First National Investments Inc., the owner of record for about half of Wydick’s properties, was incorporated in 1988, he said. It does not list an owner or operator for the company, only an attorney, William Stephen Meloy of Poland, as the statutory agent.

However, the business stopped paying its incorporation fees in 1990 and forfeited its state registration. Meloy died in January 2025. But Gambrel said Wydick continued to operate properties and collect rent under the company’s name.

Wydick also was about $200,000 behind on property taxes for her buildings. Though Gambrel said Compass, through its management of her assets, has been able to pay off most of those.

She owed about $40,000 on 1893 Oles Ave., and now all but about $7,200 of that has been paid off.

Gambrel said questions about the company’s status have delayed Compass’s ability to get the property sold, but the court is ready to allow them to move ahead with that process soon. He said he recently filed the last of the paperwork required by Mahoning County Probate Court.

“I’m at the stage now, where they are saying go ahead and sell it, but I’ve hit the snag because of the corporate status, and we can’t get a title company to issue title insurance because there is no paperwork to say who owns First National Investments.”

The building must be sold for at least $5,000, Gambrel said, and Compass has received numerous calls in recent months from interested parties. But any buyer will have to walk a fine line.

After the fire department brought the matter to trustees’ attention, Boardman Township filed a lawsuit to have the building demolished. Once Compass took over, they struck a deal with the township to drop the suit, with the understanding that any buyer interested in rehabilitating the apartments would have to bring the building up to code — meeting the fire department’s standards — and adhere to strict timelines in doing so. Otherwise, trustees said, the building would be subject to demolition.

Pitzer said he, too, sympathizes with residents of Oles Avenue, but there was little the township could do, given the complications of the case.

“From our perspective it took way too long to get here. And I do feel bad, and the township sympathizes with the property owners in the neighborhood,” he said. “We know it’s been a problem, and we’ve worked hard to address it, but as an American citizen, she has rights, inalienable rights, and those must be upheld. So, we have no course of action but to follow the legal process.”