YOUNGSTOWN — A request from the Mayor Derrick McDowell administration to provide a $350,000 “business retention” grant and three years of income tax refunds to Sparkle Market in Cornersburg to keep it operating received a cool reception from council members.

Council’s community planning and economic development committee heard the request Monday from administration officials and the owners of Sparkle Market.

DeMaine Kitchen, the city’s community planning and economic development director, said some of the store’s aisles and shelves are empty, and some people thought the store was closing.

Kitchen said: “We have a responsibility to the community to ensure that we do everything we can to make sure we don’t lose another grocery store in the city.”

Sparkle is the only “full-service” supermarket left in the city with three Save-A-Lot grocery stores in Youngstown, Kitchen said.

Kitchen said: “This is a unique situation and it’s in the community’s interest to make sure this grocery store not just stays open, but becomes solvent and profitable again, and then we can talk about some future opportunities down the road.” He said the store has “cash flow issues.”

Store owners Vince Furrie Jr. and Joe Vitullo said Sparkle has struggled to stay in business with Meijer coming to Austintown and a price war between Meijer and Giant Eagle.

“Every individual in the supermarket business is squeezed right now,” Furrie said.

The Cornersburg store on Meridian Road is one of only two that Furrie Vitullo Sparkle Market still owns, along with one in Columbiana.

The Cornersburg store, which is doing better than the one in Columbiana, “is suffering now because we don’t have the funds to put in it. We’ve extended everything we had,” Furrie said.

A number of the company’s Sparkle Market stores have closed in recent years, including in Boardman and Niles.

The proposal wasn’t met with great enthusiasm by Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward and the committee’s chairman, and Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward and a committee member.

Kitchen said Councilman Pat Kelly, D-5th Ward and committee vice chairman, who was absent at Monday’s meeting, wants to cosponsor the legislation to bail out Sparkle’s Cornersburg store.

Ray said the city has to pick and choose what it spends its money on and there is no guarantee that Sparkle will remain open even if it receives a $350,000 grant and the owners are given the income taxes its employees pay to the city as a monthly rebate for three years.

“What are our assurances as a community in supporting this that this isn’t a Band-Aid?” Ray said. “It’s a highly-competitive market now and everyone’s being squeezed. How are you going to be able to recover if it’s a short bump to get things on the shelf? What’s going to be done differently? How can you compete?”

Vitullo said he couldn’t “guarantee that we’re going to be doing gangbuster business right away. It’s going to take some time. We’re going to run some ads that would maybe attract (people) and get them back into our building to take a look at us again. We’re not going anywhere at this point in time. But like I said, I don’t want to mislead anyone here. I cannot predict the future.”

Ray said city officials “have to pick and choose our resources,” and “the pot’s only so big.”

Oliver said: “My question would be: why Sparkle and why not every other struggling business, particularly in our downtown? You got businesses talking about closing up constantly because they can’t maintain, they can’t meet payroll, they can’t pay utilities and that’s happening all over the city.”

Oliver said he understands Sparkle is important, but “what makes Sparkle any different than any other struggling business in the city that needs these funds?”

Mayor Derrick McDowell said the Sparkle store is a “staple” on the city’s West Side and brings “stability” to that area.

McDowell said: “When we look at business assistance, retention, staple is one word, but stability of an entire community comes into play in some of these instances that make them unique, where we’re not trying to set some new precedent, where we’re going to go around and promise everybody that we can save. But we have casualties that we cannot count the cost of and I believe that Sparkle meets that threshold that we cannot truly count the cost of the loss of another grocery store in our community.”

Kitchen said he wants the financial package for Sparkle to be in front of city council at its Wednesday meeting as a late item. That is highly unlikely to happen.

Ray said he needed to see financial details first.

Also, city Law Director Adam Buente said: “I hate to be a wet blanket, but this legislation is going to be complex. A grant agreement will be complicated.”

Buente added: “When we rush, we make mistakes.”

BOTTOM DOLLAR

The community planning and economic development committee gave the go-ahead Monday for council to consider late legislation at Wednesday’s meeting to permit the board of control to seek proposals for the development of the former Bottom Dollar grocery store on Glenwood Avenue on the city’s South Side that’s been closed since 2015.

The Mahoning County Board of Elections says it wants the building to relocate its warehouse and voting equipment — and eventually its early-voting center.

But there haven’t been formal negotiations between the city and the board or the Western Reserve Port Authority, which could buy the building and lease it to the elections board.

Kitchen said: “There’s interest from several parties, not just the ones that have been the loudest (the board of elections). There’s been several folks interested. No matter who ends up there, the only way they can end up there is if we utilize the process that we have that allows the folks that are interested to submit their proposals.”

The board of elections voted 4-0 on July 7 to move ahead with relocating its warehouse from Oakhill Renaissance Place, a former hospital on the city’s South Side where it’s been located, to the former Bottom Dollar location.

But on Monday, Kitchen reiterated what he told The Vindicator on July 8 that formal requests for proposals would be taken for the building and “may the best proposal win. We can move forward, put that building back into productive use, generating revenue instead of costing the city money.”

Kitchen said the longer the building stays vacant, “the less valuable it becomes and the more deterioration occurs so we feel, at this point, it’s best to cast our net, see what we bring in. Again, it’s costing us money now. We need to be in a position to generate some income tax and revenue on that building.”

The city used $1.2 million in American Rescue Plan funds in 2024 to renovate the 18,285-square-foot former Bottom Dollar building with plans for the Village of Healing to operate an infant mortality clinic as the main tenant.

Plans for the Village of Healing to go there are dead.