FAMILY BUSINESS — Brad Mularcik stood with signs for his late father’s vacuum cleaner business, Mike’s Sweeper Center, which was renamed from the Kirby Co. of Steubenville in 1980. -- Contributed

STEUBENVILLE — In late 2024, Brad Mularcik took a nostalgic, yet uplifting, tour through 147 N. Fourth St., a building he knew intimately from when he was a young man.

Constructed in 1890 and known as the Beerbower Building, the three-story structure in the Steubenville Commercial Historic District once housed Mike’s Sweeper Center. The vacuum cleaner store’s eponymous owner, the late Mike Mularcik, was Brad’s father and the downtown business’ proud owner from the 1980s until 2013.

Brad Mularcik, who’s lived in the town of Copley near Akron for the last 30 years, is a retired electrical engineer. He and his two sisters — Jodi Solomon of St. Augustine, Fla., and Tracey Westfall of Harrisville, W.Va. — worked at the sweeper center in some capacity, as kids.

The Mularciks sold the Beerbower Building in 2020, several years after Mike and his wife Ruth’s deaths. Since then, the building’s new owners have renovated the building’s first-floor commercial space and plan to restore its second- and third-floor residential spaces, leveraging historic preservation tax credits.

Brad Mularcik said he and his sisters are glad to see new life given to the building, in the town that their father worked in for so many years.

MAKER’S MARK — The Beerbower Building at 147 N. Fourth St. in Steubenville bears a builder’s inscription that denotes 1890 as the three-story building’s construction year. -- Christopher Dacanay

“It really makes us happy that someone is doing something good with the building,” he said in January.

Having arrived in Steubenville just before 1970, Mike Mularcik operated a vacuum cleaner store called the Kirby Co. of Steubenville, named after the vacuum manufacturing brand. The store, which he renamed Mike’s Sweeper Center around 1980, was originally located at 145 N. Fourth St., next to Downtown Bakery.

When his building’s landlord planned to tear it down, Mularcik was forced to relocate, leading him to purchase the Beerbower Building in 1986.

From Brad Mularcik’s recollection, the Italianate-style building had previously been home to Isaly’s, the restaurant and dairy chain headquartered in Pittsburgh. The Steubenville location boasted a deli, a lunch counter and ice cream.

“My parents had their store in Steubenville, and we were down there a lot, so we’d go down to Isaly’s all the time,” Mularcik recalled. “So, later, when my dad bought the building, we were pretty jazzed up, like: ‘Hey, we just bought the Isaly’s place.'”

Converting the former deli to a sweeper store required a “pretty big remodel, including massive electric work, roof repairs and storefront renovations, Mularcik said.

The building’s walk-in cooler became an office, and a new drop ceiling was added. Outside, new brick and stonework was applied to the facade, and various coats of paint were sandblasted off to improve the building’s look and restore its original appearance. At around 18 years old, Brad Mularcik himself constructed the corner brick wall next to the front door when the contractor was a no-show.

In 1987, Mike’s Sweeper Center held a grand opening, celebrating its new location and an expanded inventory with a ribbon cutting ceremony, featuring then-Steubenville Mayor Dave Hindman, and a write-up in the Herald-Star.

Mike Mularcik operated the center for 26 years before selling the business and building to another man — also named Mike — who ran the store until 2020.

Mike and Ruth Mularcik had purchased the Beerbower through seller financing, meaning his family had a mortgage on the property. That mortgage eventually passed to Brad Mularcik and his sisters. When the building’s new owner decided to cease retail but do repairs out of his home, the Mularciks agreed to take back the building, in exchange for him paying off the loan’s balance.

Soon afterward, the Mularciks sold the Beerbower to the real estate holdings company HCS of Merchants Isle LLC. Focused on revitalizing Steubenville’s commercial district, the company is responsible for rehabilitating several historic Fourth Street buildings, such as those currently occupied by Chesterton and Co. Cigars, Spyridon Studios and Martoni’s Pizza.

“I met these guys, and I was extremely happy with them,” Brad Mularcik said, “because Steubenville is a place that I don’t live anymore, but I grew up there. It’s always saddened me to see the decline of Steubenville. Any time I go, I look around at the lack of people on the streets. I have a picture in my head of what it was like when I was a kid — so much more hustle and bustle in the 1970s — so when I met these guys, young guys with a lot of drive and hustle in Steubenville, I was really excited about that.”

HCS of Merchants Isle has already renovated the Beerbower’s first-floor commercial space, which is presently listed and available for renting.

Next, the company seeks to redo the residential spaces, returning the Beerbower to its original mixed-use configuration. Aiding that $350,000 effort are $87,500 in tax credits from the Ohio Department of Development’s Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program, as well as potential federal tax credits.

The renovation project aims to retain as much as possible of the building’s historic elements, including door and window woodwork, a wooden stair rail and elegant fireplaces.

Brad Mularcik said he and his sisters are “really excited” about the residential renovations, as their father had always hoped to do similarly but could never find the time, given his many “irons in the fire.” The project has plenty of “beautiful, historic decor” to work with, including a skylight that Mike Mularcik had blocked off in order to be weather-tight, while getting the building up to code.

During his visit to Steubenville in late 2024, Mularcik met with HCS of Merchants Isle manager Zeph Swope, who showed him around the Beerbower.

While there, Mularcik observed the brick wall he installed 40 years ago — which he’s proud to see is still standing — and retrieved the last Mike’s Sweeper Center sign that had been stored in the building. Mularcik was also excited to see that Swope and his partners had removed the drop ceiling and restored the original, ornate tin ceiling it masked.

Having heard about future plans and seen the improvements already accomplished that his father couldn’t quite get to, Mularcik said, “My dad would’ve been thrilled to death to see this.”