Plans In The works To Transform Historic Youngstown Building Into A Boutique Hotel

Have to get back to Youngstown soon and really check it out. For a place that was absolutely flat on it's ass, a lot of low key positive things seem to be happening there exploiting the richly historic and well designed downtown and a good synergistic relationship with Youngstown State University.

Developer Envisions Wick Building as Hotel

"Out-of-town visitors to the Youngstown Business Incubator, the university, and to venues such as the Covelli Centre have no choice but to stay in the suburbs because of the lack of guest lodging downtown, Marchionda said.

"The initial reports suggest there's a need for more rooms than we first intended to build," he elaborated. Just how many rooms the new hotel would provide remains under study. "We're moving aggressively to do what we want to do there -- build a boutique hotel," the developer said.

Marchionda said the new hotel would be similar to Glidden House in Cleveland, an upscale hotel on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. "It would be an independent operation run by a group that invests in these types of things," he said, not a chain. "They would be an owner/operator and partner with us."

Should all go according to plan, Marchionda said he could proceed on the project over the "next few months," and begin work in earnest during the first quarter of 2012."

One problem that usually comes up with hotels on historic urban blocks is that the need for parking often results in tearing down one or more neighboring buildings--as is proposed for the planned renovation of East Liberty's Highland Building-and almost every hotel renovation in Detroit.