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YOUNGSTOWN -- Enbridge Gas Co. and its numerous affiliated companies, which are being sued by Youngstown officials for the deadly 2024 explosion at the former Realty Tower, filed a counterclaim against the city.
In the counterclaim, Enbridge and its affiliated companies contend the city "breached its duties" by giving a $140,133 no-bid contract to GreenHeart Companies LLC.
A four-person scrap-metal crew, engaged by GreenHeart -- owned by Brian Angelili, managing partner of the company that owned the former downtown building -- was working in a basement area underneath the 13-story structure's sidewalk removing old utility lines when a crew member sawed three times into a pipe mistakenly believing it to not have natural gas in it, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report of the explosion.
The explosion killed Akil Drake, who was working at the Chase Bank branch on the building's ground floor, and injured several others in the May 28, 2024, explosion.
The NTSB report stated the line appeared old and rusted, lacked any markings indicating it was active, and had not been marked by utility locators as pressurized gas infrastructure. The NTSB report stated the Enbridge defendants incorrectly documented the gas line as abandoned and inactive.
The Youngstown Board of Control hired GreenHeart for $140,133 on April 19, 2024, without seeking bids, to handle the utility line relocation at Realty because Angelili owned the building and the company, which does construction, and thought it would be easier for GreenHeart to do the job, Charles Shasho, the city's deputy director of public works, said shortly after the explosion.
Enbridge and its affiliated businesses as well as GreenHeart and the companies that owned and managed Realty Tower, and others settled a lawsuit in May 2025 for $6.1 million with Drake's family.
The explosion and its aftermath resulted in numerous other lawsuits, including the city filing one in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on May 27 against Enbridge, its parent company and numerous subsidiaries and sister companies as well as YO Properties 47 LLC, which owned the East Federal Street building; LY Property Management LLC, which managed the building; and GreenHeart.
In the city's lawsuit, filed by Robert Buch, a senior assistant law director, described the May 28, 2024, incident as a "catastrophic natural gas explosion."
Buch wrote: "The explosion caused destruction of public and private property, interruption of municipal operations, emergency-response expenditures, infrastructure damage, economic harm and substantial public nuisance conditions within the city of Youngstown."
The city alleged two counts of negligence against Enbridge and its companies and two counts against YO Properties, LY Property and GreenHeart.
In response to the city's lawsuit, Matthew Rechner, a Cleveland-based attorney representing Enbridge and its affiliated companies, denied wrongdoing on behalf of his clients.
Rechner wrote the city has "duties to exercise ordinary and reasonable care in its solicitation, bidding, hiring, authorization, training, supervision, inspection, monitoring, oversight and control of contractors, subcontractors or other third parties, including, but not limited to GreenHeart Companies LLC and any alleged subcontractors, in connection with the performance of construction services, including, but not limited to, removal and/or relocation of private utilities, at or around Realty Tower prior to the incident."
Rechner wrote the city "breached its duties" by failing to exercise reasonable care by giving GreenHeart a no-bid contract with Enbridge sustaining "damages as a direct and proximate result of the city's breach of duties."
Specifically, Enbridge "has and will be required to make payments to third parties, for which Enbridge Gas is entitled to and hereby demands contribution and/or indemnification from the city," Rechner wrote.
Regarding the job at Realty that GreenHeart was hired to do, Rechner wrote the city "alleges that such work constitutes an inherently dangerous activity," and "the city knew or should have known that such work posed a foreseeable risk of harm in the event the work was not performed with the requisite degree of care."
W. Wyatt McKay, a retired Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge, is serving as the visiting judge on all Realty Tower lawsuits filed against Enbridge and its affiliates as well as the companies that owned and managed the downtown building and GreenHeart.
In a July 15 judgment entry, McKay "consolidated" 10 lawsuits - including the city's - filed a few months earlier with 16 other lawsuits filed as far back as 2024 in common pleas court.
In that entry, McKay wrote the 26 cases were "consolidated for all purposes previously identified, including discovery and pre-trial scheduling, but not for purposes of filing which must be completed per individual case."
In a June 1 filing, YO Properties and LY Property denied the city's negligence allegations and asked McKay to dismiss the lawsuit.
McKay hasn't ruled on any motions in that lawsuit as of Monday.
The explosion caused the evacuation of all 23 apartments at Realty Tower on the city's Central Square with those tenants leaving their belongings behind, never to return to their homes.
The city also ordered the immediate closing of the Stambaugh Building, which houses the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel and a restaurant, on the day of the explosion because of the danger posed by the heavily-damaged Realty Tower.
International Towers, which has about 170 tenants, was evacuated June 14, 2024, four days after Youngstown city officials got a structural engineering report stating all buildings within a 210-foot radius of Realty Tower should be closed because they're in a "collapse zone."
Shortly after Aug. 19, 2024, the hotel reopened and International Towers tenants returned home.
The demolition project was completed Sept. 25, 2024, almost 12 weeks after it started and twice as long as expected.
Because of extensive damage caused by the explosion and the subsequent demolition of Realty, Market Street in front of the site and East Federal Street from Market to Champion streets, which is between the former Realty Tower and Stambaugh Building, were closed for several months.
It wasn't until early December that the section of East Federal Street reopened.
The city paid about $700,000 for work to the two streets, including repairing the roads, sidewalks, utilities, curb ramps, catch basins, landscaping and electrical upgrades.