After more than 100 years of ownership, the Jurko family has given up control of the property that contains the three businesses they developed in Yankee Lake Village and the land that once held a resort.
A company called Yankee Village Land Co. bought the property housing the Yankee Lake Inn, Yankee Lake Ballroom and the Yankee Lake Party Store, plus a chunk of vacant land, in June for $675,000 from John Jurko, according to the Trumbull County auditor’s website.
The purchases cover five lots totaling about 150 acres, according to the auditor’s website, and amount to roughly 40 percent of the land area in the village.
Yankee Village Land Co. was created in February for “business development and other endeavors,” according to its incorporation papers filed with the Ohio Secretary of State. The statutory agent of the company is James O’Brien and the address of record is listed as 7337 Warren Sharon Road, Brookfield. The auditor’s website does not register 7337 Warren Sharon Road as an active address, but that address corresponds with property O’Brien, a semi-retired lawyer, owns at Warren Sharon Road and Valley View Drive.
Jurko has assigned use of the Yankee Lake Ballroom trade name to Yankee Village Land Co.
Jurko’s grandfather, also named John, emigrated to the United States in 1906 from Romania, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He then, with E. H. Stewart in 1920, bought farm property in what was then Brookfield Township, according to yankeelakehistory.com, a website created by the current John Jurko’s son, John Jurko II.
The website gives this chronology of events:
The elder John Jurko and Stewart decided to create a resort and built the dam for what later became known as a body of water called Yankee Lake in 1923.
The Yankee Lake Inn was created out of an old farmhouse in 1927, and the Yankee Lake Ballroom opened in 1928.
The village of Yankee Lake was incorporated in 1931 and officially became a village in 1934. Four generations of Jurkos have been mayors of the village and/or served on village council.
The ballroom hosted top musical acts including Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw throughout its life and the elder John Jurko’s son, Paul, developed a successful liquor store. The current John Jurko is Paul’s son.
The state ordered the lake to be drained in 1979 because of problems with the dam.
John Jurko turned over management of the three businesses in town to Irish Yanks LLC, a company made up of Dan and Sean O’Brien and others, in 2023, but that arrangement ended in July 2024.
Attempts to reach John Jurko and James O’Brien were unsuccessful.
