Staff photo / Brandon Cantwell Linkin Natali, 11, of Austintown, examines one of the sci-fi props on display at Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership’s New Year Launch Party at the Museum of Science Fiction & Fantasy Arts warehouse in Warren on Friday evening.

WARREN — The evening’s motto was “new year, same mission,” as members of the surrounding community gathered to kick off the new year for a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the county.

Hundreds gathered inside the Museum of Science Fiction & Fantasy Arts warehouse on Friday evening, as Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership looked toward the remainder of 2026.

Attendees also were given a sneak preview of props that will be featured in the upcoming Museum of Science Fiction & Fantasy Arts, a four-story institution set to open in downtown Warren by 2028.

TNP Executive Director Matt Martin said he considered 2025 to be a “very successful” year for the nonprofit, doing a lot of the things they’ve always done.

“We did 118 demolitions in 2025. We also helped renovate six houses and built four new single-family houses, so we’re kind of covering a lot of ground in terms of housing,” Martin said. “We did 300 repairs for Trumbull County residents on their existing property, and that was across 100 different households — so we’re pretty proud of what we accomplished in housing last year.”

Martin said the nonprofit’s efforts extended beyond housing, with the continuation of the Warren Farmers Market, a weekly market from June through October, a “significant” number of brownfield cleanups and planting a bunch of trees in Warren, which is part of a five-year project.

Martin said 2025 was a big turning point from a mission standpoint, explaining that the non-profit spent a majority of the past 15 years concentrating on blight remediation, demolitions and boarded-up properties.

“We’re now ready to deemphasize demolition as a goal because we’ve accomplished a lot of what we needed to accomplish. When we started, Warren had over 1,500 vacant houses — and that’s just in Warren alone,” Martin said. “There were plenty (of) others throughout Trumbull County. The last count we did, in 2024, there were under 400 vacant properties.”

Martin said now is the time to start rebuilding, noting that the nonprofit built its first four single-family houses in 2025.

TNP invested $1.2 million to make the houses possible, building them on the former Emerson Elementary School site, according to its 2025 annual report.

“We want to continue that — our goal for 2026 is we’d like to build 10 properties, if we can,” Martin said. “We have some money to raise, but that’s the goal.”

In terms of controlling blight, Martin said TNP’s efforts extended beyond Warren, entering into areas in the county that have not experienced relief, thanks to state funding that allowed his team to do demolitions on behalf of municipalities, townships and villages.

“A lot of those communities don’t have a ton of blighted properties, but they have a couple that have been a serious community concern for a long period of time, so we did get to do demolitions really everywhere,” Martin said. “I can’t think of a community that we didn’t do a demolition in this year. It was really nice to be able to help them get those properties down and let them know what we do and who we are.”

Martin clarified that while TNP has stopped emphasizing demolition, it isn’t something they’ll stop doing.

He acknowledged the abandoned Tibbetts Wick gas station property in Liberty, which had been a talking point in trustees meetings throughout 2025.

“A lot of what we will still focus on is going to be commercial, and those gas stations are top of our list,” Martin said. “We’re trying to address those. We got that word last week, which came along with five other sites that we’re able to address this year.”

Meghan Reed, the Trumbull County Historical Society’s executive director, gave an update on the sci-fi museum’s completion date.

She said they’re working on a couple of grant timelines that dictate when things will open, but are hoping to break ground in 2027 with a 2028 opening date.

With planning for the museum starting in 2023 and completion feeling close, Reed said some days feel slow — but it’s a “good reminder” that they’re almost there, they’re almost open.

“The biggest question for us right now is how much of the building we’ll be able to open at once; we know with the money that we have currently, we’ll be able to at least open one floor of the building as a preview center,” Reed said. “We’re hoping fundraising efforts over the next year will allow us to open more of the building from that — it’s just a matter of how much we can accomplish.”