Neighborhoods

ICU Blockwatch and St. Dominic Church will host a Neighborhood Harvest from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday in the gated lot at the corner of Cottage Grove and Auburndale Avenue.

There will be food, candy, a bounce house and DJ Ira Cross. Children under age 18 must be accompanied by an adult. There also will be local police and fire departments in attendance. No costumes.

For information, call Victoria Allen at 330-360-8460. The event is sponsored by Conroy’s Party Shop, Southside Recycling and Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and is free to attend. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

On Saturday, October 20, seventeen volunteers participated in the Idora Neighborhood Workday and helped clean up and demo the basement of 1720 Glenwood Avenue.

Volunteers from Tabernacle Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Valley Christian School, and the YSU Honors College cleaned up and removed 30 cubic yards of debris from the basement and helped prepare the property for rehabilitation. We’d like to thank all the volunteers for their hard work!

Youngstown State University’s student chapter of the American Chemical Society is celebrating its 70th anniversary and National Chemistry Week with the theme “Chemistry is Out of This World.”

The ACS is a nonprofit organization and the world’s largest scientific society with over 158,000 members at all degree levels and fields of chemistry. “The general topic for National Chemistry Week this year is outer space, and each year a different theme is designated at the national level by the ACS,” Saidah Yusuf, a junior biology major said. “Last year’s theme was ‘Chemistry Rocks,’ which focused on geochemistry.” Yusuf has been a member of YSU’s ACS since she was a freshman and is the historian for the organization this year. She takes pride in educating the community about chemistry with the group. “Chemistry is important because it is everywhere and is branched out in all aspects of life,” she said. “Chemistry is involved in food, exercise, outer space — just name it, and there is chemistry involved.” Yusuf takes pride in reaching out to the community with the hands-on experiments YSU’s ACS hosts at different schools in the Youngstown area. She said the demonstrations are a great way to show children how important chemistry is to everyday life. Michael Serra, the adviser of YSU’s ACS for the past six years, said he is proud of the way students in the organization, like Yusuf, promote chemistry on campus and in the community. “The YSU ACS is an active organization that does multiple chemistry shows and presentations throughout the year,” Serra said. “[The ACS] has volunteered for Silly Science Sunday, since it first started and hosts demonstrations at the Canfield Fair that draw sizable crowds.” Along with the presentations and experiments, the organization also volunteers at Penguin Preview Day, the Rescue Mission and the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. To read the full story from The Jambar, click here. 

An eviction hearing tied to a land-contract dispute was canceled Tuesday for a client of Community Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm that sued Vision Property Management of South Carolina last week.

The hearing is rescheduled for today, when a ruling will be made on a temporary restraining order Community Legal Aid is seeking against Vision Property, which it hopes will temporarily halt the company’s ability to evict tenants until the lawsuit concludes. To read the ful story from The Vindicator, click here.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The YNDC Grass Cutting and Clean Up Team Members and AmeriCorps REVITALIZE Team Members worked this week to plant 20 trees in various locations along the Greater Glenwood Avenue Corridor.

Trees were planted at the YNDC offices at 820 Canfield Road and in vacant lots at 970 Lanterman Avenue, 624 and 1111 Glenwood Avenue, and 935 Parkview Avenue. The tree planting is part of the ongoing Glenwood Neighbors/Corridor Improvement Corps Initiative.  

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Cameron
and Elizabeth moved into 1936 Wakefield Avenue in August 2017 and have since
settled into the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood and made a number of improvements
to their new home.

YNDC worked to revitalize the property last spring and
summer, completing the work in July 2017. This is Cameron and Elizabeth’s first
homebuying experience. They built a fence in the backyard for their new dog, a
pug named Dita, and painted a number of interior rooms. “It was really great
buying a house from YNDC that was move-in ready,” said Cameron, “that way any
improvements we make can be for things we want instead of things we need.”
Their sense of style is inspired by Elizabeth’s tendency to collect items.
“I’ve collected items that appear in this house since I was about 16 years
old,” she said. Their favorite thing about the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood is
its proximity to their workplaces and the freeway. We’d like to thank Cameron
and Elizabeth for sitting down with us again and inviting us into their home!

The law firm Brouse McDowell, which is representing Vision Property Management in a lawsuit filed by non-profit law firm Community Legal Aid, filed a “notice of removal” Wednesday afternoon, asking for the case to be moved to federal court.

The lawsuit is eligible for adjudication in federal court because it includes RICO accusations, which would be a federal crime. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Officials from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Wells Fargo will join Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and YNDC on Wednesday, October 31 to highlight the First Place Small City 2018 Community WIins Award and Grant of $150,000 for Revitalize Youngstown. 

The event will begin at 10:00 a.m. at 2245 Glenwood Avenue in Youngstown.

According to a press release, the award program honors the best neighborhood stabilization efforts in the county and YNDC's work was selected as the best in the country in the small city category.

The press release said that the award was accepted by Mayor Jamael Tito Brown at the United States Conference of Mayors 86th Annual Meeting in Boston in June 2018.

The award funds were used for the purchase and renovation of 2246 Glenwood Ave as the Glenwood Business Center, which will be occupied by community organizations and businesses. To read the full story from WFMJ, click here. 

Friday, October 25, 2018

YNDC is getting the work done in 2018! Here are some
highlights of our work to date in 2018:

302 new clients were enrolled in HUD-approved housing
counseling

1,245 volunteers cleared 3,591 yards of debris, scraped
24,521 linear feet of sidewalk, and removed 986 tires at 16 workdays

2,450 Youngstown Farmers Market visitors with total EBT, Produce Perks (Fruit & Vegetable Prescription and Double-Up), and WIC Farmers Market Voucher sales of $24,136.

131 homeowners created

15 Vacant Units Rehabilitated

Dennis Cuadra may have come up with a few tricks for making fast modifications to his fancy car, but the result has been a lot of treats for viewers’ eyes.

“It’s the only car in the state of Ohio with the speakers behind the seats,” the Struthers man said proudly about his 2002 Alfa Romeo, which was featured in the popular 2001 action film “The Fast and the Furious.” The light-blue vehicle Cuadra bought in 2004 in Hollywood, Calif., for $80,000 also was a treat for many who attended Sunday afternoon’s fourth annual fall Car Show and Trunk or Treat at Faith Community Church, 1919 E. Midlothian Blvd., on the South Side. Hosting the two-hour outdoor Halloween-themed show was the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood Association. The family-oriented gathering also was a joint effort between the BWNA and Faith Community Church, the site of the association’s monthly meetings, and was designed to bring the community closer together, noted the Rev. Michael Zabel, pastor. “There is something for the kids and something for the adults,” he said. “We wanted to bring the neighborhood together and have a safe environment for the kids.” Cuadra’s car was equipped with three tanks of nitrogen, which you could say helps makes it possible for the Alfa Romeo to travel furiously fast quite quickly – specifically, from 0 to 60 mph in just under 10 seconds. Another unmistakably noticeable feature is the front “Lamborghini doors,” which elevate and open at an angle to resemble a race car, he continued. For the car show, Cuadra installed a framed picture next to his vehicle that had autographs by Vin Diesel and the other “Fast and Furious” stars. Before giving his car a Halloween look by decorating it with spider webs made from cotton complemented with clowns with sinister expressions, Cuadra made modifications that consisted of neon lights scattered under the dashboard, along the tire rims, on the doors and elsewhere that can flash. The effect is akin to a traveling discotheque, he explained. “It lights up like a Christmas tree. It has neon lights everywhere,” Cuadra said, adding the car also has five monitors for watching TV and movies, along with a surround-sound system. Helping Cuadra achieve the event’s full effect were his two children, Shakira, 6, and Jeremiah, 8, who distributed candy to many attendees and were dressed in Halloween costumes. Other vintage vehicles at the show included a bright-red 1958 Chevrolet Impala, a black Delta 88 and a blue Corvette Stingray. The block-watch association, which formed about 10 years ago, represents about 1,000 homes between Midlothian Boulevard and Country Club Avenue to the north and south, as well as Youngstown-Poland Road and Interstate 680 to the east and west, noted Nancy Martin, president. The BWNA also is the result of two block-watch groups having merged in early 2010, and has a strong partnership with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. The association has used a series of grants to beautify the Sheridan Road corridor, which included adding signage and gardens, Martin pointed out. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.