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A recent Tribune Chronicle article noted yet another shooting in downtown Warren. This one was near The Horseshoe Bar. This also goes along with the shooting in Downtown Warren in June after the African American Achievers Association Festival that started in the abandoned Burger King parking lot and moved to the South Main Plaza lot with several shots fired.
At the beginning of this year, I wrote a letter to the City Council regarding the ongoing blight in Downtown and the surrounding areas. I did this to try and spark conversation on the best way to combat this blight, so it does not lead to other unwanted violence.
My letter was leaked to the press by a City Council member seeking to use it as political gain during a campaign year and because of this leak, all of City Council with the exception of Mr. Ronald White and Mr. Gary Steinbeck decided they would shut down any conversation with me regarding my letter. I commend the two members of council that reached out to me, genuinely interested in improving our town. The rest of city council, including Council President John Brown, did not even bother to reach out to have constructive conversation about this issue.
With that said, this brings me to the aforementioned shootings in Warren. When blight starts to take over a city, it breeds the idea that no one cares, and no one will care what is done. This is now evident in what has happened including the latest shooting. The shooting in the Burger King parking lot may have been avoided if Burger King was still operating or another entity was occupying this space, but that is not the case. Now, the parking lot routinely looks like a garbage dump, and the building has two broken windows, one of which has simply been boarded up. What kind of message is this sending to visiting people or moreover people interested in perpetuating more violence?
During the first shooting, South Main Plaza, which I own, was damaged by stray bullets. There were over 20 empty casings found in the parking lot, and I was left to clean up the mess from the shooters, including two broken windows with bullet holes. This is a building that my company has spent over $500,000 improving, a building that was 10% occupied when we bought it and is now 100% occupied with great but concerned business owners. The second shooting occurred just a few steps from the renovated Robins Theatre, which my company spent over $6,000,000 repairing and rejuvenating in order to help revitalize downtown Warren.
That evening we had over 500 people in the theatre for a fantastic show. Now we are left wondering what the impact of further downtown violence will be while the politicians sit by and wonder what to do, They do not solicit help from downtown residents or downtown businesses on a way to curb this onslaught of violence. Instead, they remain angry because someone had the audacity to call out building owners who have made empty promises and can be blamed for the blight and potentially ongoing violence.
In my letter regarding blight, I commented that my company would no longer take on any additional projects in downtown Warren unless this blight, road closures and other items were addressed. None of this has been done.
I further went against my own word in order to try and secure my own "backyard" as it were and offered to buy the Burger King facility and property. I offered this at market price and was subsequently denied by the owners of the building and property and the now-bankrupt Burger King franchisee. So, there it sits, collecting garbage in the parking lot every weekend while certain city officials clean it up on the city's dime. At what point will we stop covering for the Christopher Alans', Irene Makridis', Steve Coons' and Reeves' Apartment owners and start forcing them to clean up, tear down or sell their properties at fair market value to investors and developers with a proven track record and will to perform the necessary renovations to clean up the property and thereby the city and hopefully put an end to some of the recent violence.
This cannot be done when our leaders do not return phone calls, do not answer letters to offer help and are not willing to sit down with the downtown stakeholders to discuss the means necessary to provide a safe and secure downtown area where people can come to eat a good meal, have a drink in a friendly environment and see a show at our wonderful facilities.
This is my call on Warren's political leaders to pick up the phone, organize these meetings and start listening to ideas that concerned citizens all around Warren have in order to stop the violence.
Warren is a beautiful city and has much to offer with more to come, but that will not happen until our leaders step up and do the right thing.
Mark D. Marvin is a downtown Warren resident and president of Downtown Development Group.