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YOUNGSTOWN -- Potential Development, a PK-12 school system for students with autism, submitted the lone proposal to the city for the long-vacant former Bottom Dollar grocery store.
Paul Garchar, Potential Development's CEO, said the school system is crowded at its K-6 building and wants to use the former Bottom Dollar location on Glenwood Avenue for a K-2 or K-3 building.
"We are looking for additional classroom space and this would take some pressure off the elementary school," Garchar said.
Asked why the school is interested in the former Bottom Dollar location, Garchar said, "It's the proximity to the other buildings. All would be within 2 miles of each other. We continue to grow and space is more of a premium."
The school system has 345 students, with the preschool located on East Indianola Avenue and its K-6 school and its high school, for students in grades 7-12, both on Market Street.
The city had sought requests for proposals for the vacant former grocery store with 4 p.m. Wednesday being the deadline to submit them.
DeMaine Kitchen, the city's director of community planning and economic development, said: "We'll evaluate the proposal with the mayor and the economic development team and see if it makes sense to proceed or hold off."
The proposal wasn't opened Wednesday.
The Bottom Dollar building has been vacant since January 2015 when the grocery store chain was sold to Aldi Inc., which closed it and all Bottom Dollar locations, including two others in the city.
The Mahoning County Board of Elections toured the Bottom Dollar location on April 9 with board Director David Betras declaring it was the ideal location to relocate its office. Elections board officials wanted the city to either give the building away for nothing or sell it for $1 to the Western Reserve Port Authority and then have the WRPA lease the structure to them for 20 years.
But neither officials from the board of elections nor the WRPA sat down with the city for formal negotiations.
The elections board 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 has been located for about 20 years, to the former Bottom Dollar location. The plan would also move the early-voting center from Oakhill to Bottom Dollar next year.
However, that vote would have had the board of elections move its other staff to a county administration building that will be erected downtown at the former Eastern Gateway Community College building and garage.
Elections officials had dismissed relocating to that proposed downtown facility almost immediately after county commissioners in January signed an agreement with the WRPA for the project.
But that changed as part of a compromise to relocate to the former Bottom Dollar. Subsequent to that, the board's plan to occupy two buildings wasn't warmly received.
The Vindicator reported Aug. 1 that the board of elections had moved on from Bottom Dollar and were considering another building in the city for its offices. The board hasn't disclosed that location and only preliminary discussions have been held with the property's owner.
Betras said at the time that Bottom Dollar was the board's second choice.
With the board of elections, WRPA or the county commissioners submitting a proposal to the city, that backup plan is apparently dead.
Kitchen had said a number of times that he was skeptical of the board of elections' talk of moving to Bottom Dollar because it never presented a plan to the city and formal requests would be required before anything could be done.
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.
Kitchen said Wednesday that Potential Development had initially expressed interest in the building, but "it died down with the board of elections stuff. But they weren't tainted by all the noise surrounding the board of elections. It makes sense for them to have that location given they're on Indianola and Market."