Officials: Reopening former Youngstown Developmental Center was a team effort

MINERAL RIDGE — It’s been three-and-a-half years since the state shuttered the Youngstown Developmental Center, forcing local families to seek essential services for the disabled and mentally ill that were sometimes hours away.

Mahoning County officials earlier this month announced the 35-acre campus’ return as the Mahoning Valley Campus of Care, one of the only sites in the state that could offer comprehensive, wraparound services. It’s set to reopen by the end of the year.

The several area nonprofits set to be the campus’ new tenants are now renovating or preparing their own spaces. The county will assist with the heavy lifting, but “it’s really not major,” said Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti.

“The state kept the building up pretty well. … The insides of the buildings — they’re not in bad shape. They need a good cleaning and painting, maybe,” she said.

The county purchased the facility from the state in 2017 and had four years to prepare it for reopening, lest it revert back to the state. The county intends to turn the campus over to the tenant providers, with the Western Reserve Port Authority acting as property manager and charging fees for upkeep.

“It’s just a tale of cooperation among those organizations,” said Duane Piccirilli, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board, which has overseen coordination for the new campus.

He expects one building could be dedicated to serving clients with autism; another for the “medically fragile” — those who have lived independently but still need assistance and aren’t ready to move into a nursing home.

“We were really working hard for about three years to make this become a reality,” said Bill Whitacre, superintendent of the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities, which formerly operated the center. “Obviously, it’s been a long time coming.”

Trumbull County’s developmental disabilities board is also a partner, as the former YDC’s closure impacted “so many people” from both counties, Whitacre said.

“A bunch of people came together to work on a project we thought would be a good resource for the county,” Whitacre said. “We knew it was never going to be what it was … [We thought,] let’s make this a small, multi-service type campus.”

Whitacre said it’s an opportunity to establish new short-term care for the disabled through youth respite programs run by the Columbus nonprofit Boundless, which is expected to dedicate 30 new jobs to the Campus of Care.

It’s been difficult to find providers for those programs — and especially to serve youth in crisis, Whitacre said.

The board is also working with Boundless to develop new long-term bed space for youth with higher care needs that can’t be met by a single agency, offering 16- to 18-month stays to help them stabilize, he said.

“There has to be some renovation done there to be set up for this,” Whitacre said. “We’re just now getting into those discussions. We haven’t decided what we need to budget yet.”

Rimedio-Righetti said the project has state legislative backing from Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, and Sen. Michael Rulli of Salem, R-33rd, both of whom pledged to seek line items in Ohio’s latest capital budget for the 2021-22 fiscal years — possibly for several hundred-thousands of dollars, but it’s still unclear.

In January, commissioners were confident state legislators could drum up a $1.5 million ask from the capital budget — but that was before Ohio marked its first coronavirus cases.

The capital budgeting process now appears all but abandoned for the year, due to budget strains caused by the pandemic.

Piccirilli said many of the providers to whom the county will eventually turn over the property have been pitching in funds for renovation work. Alta Behavioral Healthcare is putting forth some of the $500,000 grant it received from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, he said.

The return of local services means families won’t have to travel to facilities as far as Warrensville or even Columbus for services.

“People were driving an hour to see their loved ones,” said Rimedio-Righetti. “Some of the family members who were older had to give their [YDC] residents to the state like a guardianship because they couldn’t get to them.

“Everybody just felt the same thing about this project. It’s a good thing for the Valley. You gotta help those who can’t help themselves.”

This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Officials: Reopening former Youngstown Developmental Center was a team effort."