YOUNGSTOWN — City officials allocated $1.5 million of American Rescue Plan money in 2024 for the study and design of a safety campus, which almost certainly will never come to fruition.

Strollo Architects, the Youngstown-based firm hired for the design work, has received about $1.16 million of that ARP money from the city to date, said Gregg Strollo, its owner.

“What we did is worth more than that, but no one thinks we did anything worthwhile,” Strollo said. “What we’ve done so far is a pretty good start. But the city, near as I can tell, isn’t interested in the project.”

What happened, Strollo said, is that then-Mayor Jamael Tito Brown was very interested in a safety campus, but took a “step back” because of concerns from some city council members about it. Derrick McDowell, who beat and replaced Brown as mayor, “doesn’t want to look at it,” Strollo said.

Andy Resnick, the city’s spokesman, said: “This was an inherited ARP allocation for design services. Our responsibility now is to weigh moving from concept to reality responsibly, determine if there is a path to fund the project.”

Resnick added: “We still believe Youngstown needs modern public safety facilities, particularly (the police), but need to make sure any potential project is operationally sound, financially realistic and sustainable for the future.”

Strollo said: “I get Derrick’s position, and I got Tito’s position. They’re just different.”

Strollo said it isn’t uncommon for money to be spent on architectural designs for projects that never occur.

The board of control hired Strollo Architects in February 2023 through two $24,000 contracts to do predesign, site planning and budget projections to construct the building on Wick Avenue for the police department and main fire station, which are currently both located downtown.

That preliminary study was first made public in December 2023.

The initial proposed safety campus — a combined police department and main fire station — was to be on Wick Avenue on the North Side on city-owned property at what was known as the Wick Six site, a group of new car dealerships that left in the 1980s and early 1990s as the area deteriorated.

Brown initially wanted to use $15 million of the city’s $82.7 million ARP allocation to pay for a $45 million, 138,000-square-foot campus back in December 2023. That was immediately rebuffed by city council because of the cost and location.

After the negative feedback, Brown said the price could be reduced to $20 million with the final cost and location determined by the study.

Brown asked for $3 million in ARP funds to be spent on the study in February 2024, but council didn’t back the request. Brown got the legislative body to agree a month later to the $1.5 million ARP allocation.

Strollo said extensive work was done, initially for the proposed police department and main fire station and then for just a police station.

Regarding the Wick Avenue site, Strollo said, “We did a deep dive into the site, the topography, utilities, access points and then designed it.”

Strollo said he was then asked to do a “detailed evaluation” of about 12 or 13 other sites, narrowing it down to 10.

“We did a pretty complex matrix of each site,” Strollo said. “Since that time, additional sites were thrown around, but we didn’t do anything with them because we didn’t know what would happen.”

The information of the various sites was provided to city officials, Strollo said.

Strollo said there were discussions to provide another $1.5 million for design work for a project that would cost about $40 million to $50 million.

Strollo said: “There were questions because there wasn’t 100% certainty of it going through so why don’t we limit it to half the cost to know how big it would be, what it would look like and after we get the buy-in, we’d get the second half of the fee. We’ve gone about half way. We expected it to go the whole way, and we’re disappointed.”

Strollo said the last bill his company sent the city was about six months ago and there is about $340,000 left that hasn’t been spent from that $1.5 million in ARP funds.

The work has stopped, Strollo said.

“I’m not interested in sending bills for work we didn’t do,” he said. “I reminded folks in the city that we are prepared to look for other places for police and fire because that would fit in with the allocation. They said they’d confer with me.”

Under ARP rules, the city has two options: pay the remaining money to the firm for what Strollo is offering to do, including possibly designing a smaller fire station, or return it to the federal government by the end of the year.

This isn’t the first ARP issue McDowell inherited from Brown.

Brown authorized a $1.2 million allocation to turn the former Bottom Dollar grocery store, a long-vacant building on the South Side, into a community hub.

That $1.2 million took care of only about one-third of the building’s renovations.

Also, a lease was never signed with the Village of Healing, which was going to operate an infant mortality clinic out of the building as the main tenant.

The Mahoning County Board of Elections wants the city to turn over the building, vacant since January 2015, to the Western Reserve Port Authority for free or $1 so it can sign a lease for the 18,285-square-foot structure. No formal negotiations have commenced.