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An artist’s concept of a planned spec building, a 100,000-square-foot structure with 32-foot ceilings. The planned West Warren Industrial Park is a large scale multimillion dollar development suitable for midsized modern manufacturing, warehouse / distribution and research / development.
WARREN — The former Westlawn neighborhood on Warren’s southwest side, as it stands now, is a vast 86-acre stretch of vacant land covered in ankle-high grass.
But not for too much longer.
Expect to see earth “moving and shaking” on building No. 1 of the West Warren Industrial Park — a large scale multimillion dollar development suitable for mid-sized modern manufacturing, warehouse / distribution and research / development — in spring 2024, according to one of the developers.
“You’ll see a building here over the summer, and we hope to have it delivered to a tenant at the end of 2024, early 2025,” Mike Martof, a partner in West Warren Development LLC, the company developing the site, said.
On Tuesday, Martof of Kent, and his partners, Wiley Runnestrand of Bazetta and Brookfield native Chuck George, joined local and state dignitaries, including Gov. Mike DeWine, to mark officially the project with a ceremonial groundbreaking.
“Isn’t this a great day, a great day for Warren, a great day for the Mahoning Valley?” DeWine said.
“When someone invests in something and puts their own money in it, it tells you something … for Chuck and Mike and Wiley, and for everyone else involved in this, you put your money here and what that says to me is that you think from a business point of view that the future of Warren is good, the future of the Mahoning Valley is very, very, very positive,” DeWine said.
The first spec building planned is a 100,000-square-foot structure with 32-foot ceilings. The initial investment is more than $10 million.
Martof said an end-user has yet to be identified, but marketing to secure a tenant is expected to start in early 2024.
“What is unique about this, it’s a leap of faith that there is someone out there …” Martof said.
Construction on building No. 2 is expected to begin shortly after the first is completed, Martof said.
“Develop, develop, develop, so we want to build five to seven buildings, depending on size,” Martof said, adding the second structure more than like would be a twin to the first, but later buildings could be larger if a build-to-suit tenant becomes present.
“Our big belief, everything that we are doing, how we are investing in the Mahoning Valley (is because) we are seeing all the great things happening in other geographies and we want to bring that here,” Martof said. “There is Class A space in Cleveland, there is Class A space in Pittsburgh. We think the Mahoning Valley deserves Class A space. There are people where that need this space.”
Class A is considered top of the line, a high-quality structure.
In this case, this type of speculative real estate starts to fill a large hole in local business attraction and development efforts — the lack of marketable buildings suitable for modern business. It’s not that buildings don’t exist, it’s they lack certain attributes that make them attractive — from low ceilings to environmental issues to the absence of technology.
GETTING HERE
In February, West Warren Development LLC, an affiliate of Warren-based Sapientia Ventures, acquired the land from the Western Reserve Port Authority, which acted as a conduit to pass it along from Warren and Warren City Schools to the company.
The port authority, using special powers in Ohio law that allows port authorities to acquire and sell property without going to bid, accepted the land in January.
West Warren paid $195,000 for land, about 50 acres of which belonged to the city.
Today, the port authority board is expected to consider bring the project into its capital lease program, which could save West Warren hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction costs.
Under terms of the agreement with the port authority, it will own the project and lease it back to West Warren for a period of time, typically five years. It’s a financing mechanism that port authorities in Ohio have available to exempt sales tax on construction-related materials.
“What that will mean is it will help incentivize this entity to get their project built so we can start turning more dirt and getting jobs created,” Anthony Trevena, port authority executive director, said.
The general rule is about 50 percent of the building cost is construction-related materials.
“So if you take a $10 million project, that project would then pay about $675,000 in Trumbull County sales tax. That is real money. To a project developer, when you’re trying to raise capital … it’s almost like the community is an investor in the project,” Trevena said.
THE SITE
It was the former Westlawn neighborhood that was built in the 1940s to house workers at the former Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant just west of Newton Falls. By the 1980s and 1990s the area had fallen on hard times, notorious for drugs, crimes and fires.
The area was cleaned up and the homes, mostly if not all multi-family concrete slab units, were demolished in the 1990s.
The 30 or so acres that were owned by the school district had been the site of Western Reserve High School, and later middle school after the district combined two high schools in the early 1990s. Alden Elementary School also was at the site.
The middle school was demolished in August 2010 and Alden in June of the same year.
It’s the first major investment in a neighborhood on the west side since Western Reserve was built in the late 1960s, said Warren Mayor Doug Franklin.
“The is a significant investment in an area where a majority of the properties have been vacant for over 30 years. Not only will this project create jobs and generate taxes for the city and schools, but it will also be a welcome investment on the city’s southwest side leading to improved roads, infrastructure, as well as stabilized and increased property values,” he said. “This was a huge, huge undertaking that has been in the works for a long time.”
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