Neighborhoods

A state park organization honored the Glenwood Community Park on the city’s South Side with a second-place award in its best partnership category.

“This is exciting and I hope the unity and cooperation shown with this park can lead to building parks, using the same model, in other parts of the city,” said Robert Burke, Youngstown park and recreation director.

Glenwood finished second among 16 nominees in the Ohio Parks and Recreation Association’s partnership category. That category honors recreational facilities and programs that involve members of the community working together with government.

First place went to a project that opened a pool at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to residents of Fairborn in southwest Ohio.

For about three years, kids in Youngstown’s Fosterville and Idora neighborhoods, on and along Glenwood Avenue, didn’t have a playground or park nearby, until the new park opened last fall.

It was built after a series of meetings with residents to determine a new location and what should be in the park.

The park on Glenwood Avenue, between Laclede and Sherwood avenues, includes a full asphalt basketball court, the only climbing rock in the city’s park system, a playground, and a pavilion.

The $300,000 project had numerous groups and organizations volunteer to build the park primarily with money from the city, but also from foundation and association grants.

“It’s a community asset on the South Side,” Burke said. “Without the help of many, we couldn’t have done this.”

Woody Woodward, the state association’s executive director said the park “is a shining example” of what happens when people “work hard every day to improve the quality of life.”

Among the numerous organizations involved in obtaining grants and helping to build the park is the Idora Neighborhood Association.

“We asked the kids what they wanted, and that’s what was built,” said Jim London, the association’s president. “Everybody takes pride in the park because everyone was involved in the planning process and helped build it. It’s brought a lot of people together.”

In addition to the playground and basketball court, the park is used for parties, picnics, and community meetings, London said.

The city sold land on Glenwood Avenue — a short distance from this park — that used to be the location of Fosterville Park, which consisted of old playground equipment, and the former Cleveland School location, for $14,000 in 2010 to Bottom Dollar.

Two years later, the company opened a 17,000-square-foot location, the only full-service grocery store on the South Side. Bottom Dollar recently announced the sale of all of its stores, effective at the end of the year, to ALDI, which hasn’t said if it will reopen any of them under their company’s name.

Mayor John A. McNally is asking ALDI to return ownership of the Bottom Dollar property to the city.

To read the full story from vindy.com, click here. 

Earlier this year, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) and the City of Youngstown held a series of public meetings to gather feedback from residents regarding the conditions of their neighborhoods.

'Revitalize Youngstown' is 15 month planning initiative.

The 15 month initiative - titled Revitalize Youngstown - sought to gather feedback so that realistic individual neighborhood strategies could be developed throughout the city.

The feedback from those meetings was based on a highly detailed neighborhood conditions report which was published by YNDC in February 2014.

The last plan the city completed was the Youngstown 2010 Citywide Plan. You can click here for a detailed analysis of what was and wasn't accomplished under that plan.

In 2013, YNDC won a bid to take over city planning services. Last month, the organization was named the community development corporation of the year by the Ohio Community Development Corporation Association.

YNDC Executive Director Ian Beniston discusses the details

of the Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Report to residents at the Covelli Centre.

And last Wednesday at a standing-room-only meeting at the Covelli Centre, the results of this year's community meetings were made public. YNDC presented attendees with a 'Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Report' which focused on four key areas:

Housing & Property Issues

Infrastructure Repair & Maintenance

Crime & Safety Concerns

Encouraging Economic Development

Each section contains a list of action steps as well as best practices from other cities and organizations, funding opportunities, recommended policy changes, and improved process descriptions.

Certain areas of the city will receive specific Action Plans in which teams of residents and city officials will team up to work through the details of those plans. Some of these meetings have already begun. Other will begin this year and will commence throughout 2015.

To read the full story from Defend Youngstown, click here. 

During my two-year tenure as a Strong Cities, Strong Communities Fellow in Youngstown, Ohio I found myself asking “What is Youngstown’s future? Will it truly recover from Black Monday and the darkest days of deindustrialization, population loss and economic challenges?”

Extreme City: Youngstown is a city of extremes with an inspiring, but sometimes heart breaking history. It is home to important manufacturing, industrial and post-industrial accomplishments, yet it struggles with some of the biggest economic challenges in the nation. Youngstown’s people are seeking a better future for their beloved Mahoning Valley, creating new traditions of community trust in the shadow of a not-always-trustworthy local history.

Youngstown is one of six cities in the United States with a poverty rate above 40%. It is also home to the number one university-affiliated business incubator in the World. After two years working in this city of extremes, I’ve come to learn that Youngstown’s brightest opportunities can be described by three themes: Makers, Millennials and Maple Syrup.

Makers: Youngstown is a place where legions came to work with their hands, to make steel from raw materials, to fabricate the things made from steel, and to build the places to house industry, families, civic life, and local commerce. The maker tradition has always been here; it’s now taking on new life through a blend of new and traditional technologies.

The Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI) hosts several dozen companies, hundreds of people creating business-to-business software, and millions of dollars injected into the local economy.

Youngstown Business Incubator features its “Number One in the World” Ranking.

Youngstown Business Incubator features its “Number One in the World” Ranking.

Along with local start-ups, people and businesses have relocated here from both coasts to take advantage of the low cost of living and incredible support network at YBI.

3-D printing (officially called “additive manufacturing”) is the hot technology for the 21st century “maker movement,” and Youngstown is home to AmericaMakes, the national center for this technology. With a history in traditional manufacturing and fabricating techniques, and investments in new manufacturing technologies Youngstown has the ingredients for developing a competitive advantage in the next generation of “making stuff.”

The Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition hopes to hone this competitive advantage through workforce training in both traditional and advanced manufacturing skills.

Some makers still work individually and by hand. The Oak Hill Collaborative incubator is one example, as home to the small businesses of several “makers.”

“Maker” Incubator Space in Oak Hill Collaborative

“Maker” Incubator Space in Oak Hill Collaborative

Millennials: A key group of Youngstowners have come back home, have recently arrived, or never left. Born after the steel mills shut down in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they see Youngstown not for what it has lost, but for what they can help it become. Leading the change are diverse twenty-and-thirty-somethings, sometimes dubbed the Millennial generation. Here are three of the many who are reinventing Youngstown.

Ian Beniston, Executive Director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) is helping to rebuild Youngstown one house, one vacant lot, one block at a time. He returned to Youngstown with a Masters Degree and professional experience from elsewhere. Characteristic of the millennial generation, Beniston is focused and passionate about YNDC’s role making change happen. He’s been instrumental in YNDC’s rapid pace of success and has attracted a cadre of other focused young professionals to YNDC’s work. After only five years in operation, YNDC was recognized in 2014 as Ohio’s Community Development Corporation of the Year.

Staff and Volunteers of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation celebrate their CDC of the Year Award.

Staff and Volunteers of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation celebrate their CDC of the Year Award.

Public library executive director Heidi Daniel is a Michigan native, recruited to Youngstown from the Houston library system two and a half years ago. Daniel exemplifies the new generation of librarians: technology-savvy information evangelists.

Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County

Technology-savvy Public Library Director Heidi Daniel

She is building on an already excellent public library system by introducing programs that take the library out to the community, by providing new learning experiences such as “makerspaces,” and by focusing on financial sustainability, earning the public’s trust and exceptional community service.

Dominic C. Marchionda of NYO Property Group and a city planner with the Youngstown State University Center for Urban and Regional Studies returned to Youngstown after graduate school and several years in city planning. He initiated the Downtown Economic Action Group that is seeking to transform the physical environment in the downtown and the way downtown businesses interact with the public, City government, and each other.

Maple Syrup: The Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association brings together residents in a neighborhood next to Youngstown’s magnificent 1890s Mill Creek Park. This group is improving their neighborhood by building on rediscovered history and the local foods movement. Rocky Ridge is adjacent to the portion of the 2,800 acre Mill Creek Park that houses a 70 year old maple grove, which until a few years ago had never been tapped.

Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association

Rocky Ridge Sugar House in Mill Creek Park

The Rocky Ridge neighbors organized the effort to make the now-popular Mill Creek Maple Syrup and helped create the Rocky Ridge Sugar House. Proceeds from sale of the syrup are used for neighborhood and park improvement projects. The group’s next endeavor is Mill Creek Maple Cotton Candy, made possible with the purchase of a cotton candy machine using $700 from Youngstown SOUP, a micro-granting, crowd-funding dinner that supports creative community projects in Youngstown. While the city has continued to lose population, the Rocky Ridge neighbors are finding ways to re-instill pride to stem that tide.

Mill Creek Maple Syrup is one small example of the power of the local foods movement in Youngstown. Other examples include: Catullo Prime Meats, Flannel Farms, Iron Roots Urban Farm and their free cooking and urban farming classes, the Idora Neighborhood Farmers Market, and the Common Wealth Kitchen Incubator.

Community Aspirations: One of the most encouraging initiatives I was involved in during my two years in Youngstown was a series of community conversations guided by the principles of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. These community conversations are bringing to the forefront Youngstown’s aspirations and a sense of purpose for the community’s future. The work has been supported by Youngstown Rotary, the public library and other civic and business organizations.

Distilled from the common themes that arose during the community conversations is the following community narrative:

“To have the kind of community we want, we need to connect people, neighborhoods, and local governments. Authority figures are not necessarily trusted leaders, so we need to take individual and collective responsibility. Public processes need to become more transparent and our shared understanding of leadership needs to be expanded so that everyone who wants to contribute receives support from others and knows they can make a difference. If we do this, we will improve trust, build relationships and create a community where we are all willing to work for the common good.”

When Youngstown’s citizens “own” this community narrative and work collectively to accomplish the leadership changes they aspire to, then Youngstown will have a bright future indeed.

To read the full story from Urban Current, click here. 

Sunday, November 30, 2014

In November, the Ohio Parks and Recreation Association
(OPRA) announced the winners of its 2014 Annual Awards of Excellence.

The City
of Youngstown Department of Parks and Recreation won a second place award in
the Partnership category for the collaborative partnership that was established
to create Glenwood Community Park. This partnership included the Department of
Parks and Recreation, Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, Mill
Creek MetroParks, and the Idora Neighborhood Association. These four groups,
each with unique strengths, worked together to assemble the land, establish a
plan and layout for the park, leverage broad financial partnerships, and
recruit community volunteers to participate in its construction.

The park was supported by both public and private financial
partners, including The City of Youngstown, Bottom Dollar Foods, The U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, The Walter E. Watson Charitable
Trust, KaBOOM! Dr. Pepper-Snapple, the PNC Foundation, and the J. Ford Crandall
Memorial Foundation. Over 100 volunteers including Team Depot, neighborhood
youth, and representatives from 17 additional community organizations
participated in the park’s construction.

Since the completion of Glenwood Community Park in September
2013, the park has served thousands of neighborhood residents.  As many as 150 to 200 people have been
observed using the park at peak times. More than 10 formal community events and
neighborhood functions have been hosted at the park, including IdoraFest, the
neighborhood’s annual festival. The summer camp hosted at the park served 2,080
children in 2014 and provided 3,680 meals to youth throughout the season.
Glenwood Community Park demonstrates the significant impact that strong and
innovative partnerships can have toward addressing neighborhood needs in
Youngstown.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

The AmeriCorps REVITALIZE team has been busy at work to eliminate blight in neighborhoods across the City of Youngstown.

The AmeriCorps REVITALIZE team is a team of 10 AmeriCorps State members led by Program Coordinator Chris Nichols to board up, clean up, and rehabilitate vacant homes in Youngstown’s neighborhoods. These AmeriCorps community service members, all residents of the City of Youngstown, serve for a period of 1 year at YNDC, which started on September 2, 2014. To date, 138 properties have been improved by the AmeriCorps REVITALIZE Team, including:

• 127 vacant properties boarded or otherwise cleaned up,
• 2 homes of owner-occupants repaired,
• Assisted in construction of 1 Habitat for Humanity house,
• 2 vacant lots repurposed, and
• 6 vacant homes rehabilitated.

The highlights of the team’s impact on eliminating blight include:

• 413 abandoned tires removed
• 65,450 gallons of trash removed in contractor bags.
• 36 tractor trailers of blight hauled away in dump trucks and dumpsters.
• Over 1 mile of overgrown sidewalk cleaned up and brought back into use.
• Over 600 boards cut for securing vacant homes.

This work has taken place in all of the following neighborhoods to date:

• Brier Hill
• Crandall Park
• East High
• Idora
• Lansingville
• Lincoln Knolls
• McGuffey Heights
• Newport
• Oak Hill
• Pleasant Grove
• Powerstown
• Wick Park

The team is presently working in the Newport neighborhood on the city’s south side, where they are working to clean up and secure nearly 70 vacant homes as part of an effort to implement the Newport Neighborhood Action Plan.

The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., along with other local organizations, was named one of only 26 nationwide winners of a “Local Foods, Local Places” federal competition to help revitalize the city’s economy through local food-system development.

Officials from the federal Appalachian Regional Commission, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency will be at the Common Wealth Kitchen Incubator, 907 Elm St., at 3:30 p.m. today to make the announcement about all of the winners. The 26 winners were chosen from 316 applicants.

YNDC and the other organizations will benefit from workshops with federal officials to discuss how local food can spur economic development in the city, a report with recommendations as to how those proposals can be done, and $20,000 to begin to implement some of the recommended projects.

“It’s quite an honor to be selected among only 26 winners,” said Louis Segesvary, an ARC spokesman. “Youngstown is rebounding. It’s diversifying its economy, and this is one notable way” that process is being helped.

The report should be done by the middle of next year with the implementation to follow, said Liberty Merrill, YNDC’s land reuse director.

“This will help our efforts to use local foods to help reinvigorate the economy,” she said.

Some of the other local organizations involved are the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, and the Mahoning Valley Food Coalition, which includes Common Wealth Inc., Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, Grow Youngstown, Goodness Grows, Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and the Ohio State University Extension’s Mahoning County office.

“This will increase the economic opportunities for local farmers and food producers and provide healthy food to those in the inner city,” said Kathy Zook, Eastgate’s program manager. “We are really pleased that we were selected, as only 26 were chosen nationwide.”

To read the full story at Vindy.com, click here.

A proposal among various local organizations was selected by federal officials as one of 26 national winners of the “Local Foods, Local Places” competition.

Officials with the state and federal Appalachian Regional Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were at the Common Wealth Kitchen Incubator today for the announcement.

The proposal, with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. as the lead agency, was among 316 applicants.

“Partnerships are important as is engagement and how the groups relate to each other to develop Youngstown,” said Earl F. Gohl, co-chairman of the federal Appalachian Regional Commission, on why the Youngstown project was selected.

YNDC and the other organizations will have workshops with the assistance of an outside consultant to formulate a plan to help revitalize the city through local food-system development.

Also, $20,000 will be provided by the federal agencies to help implement some of the plans’ particulars.

Some of the other local organizations involved are the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, and the Mahoning Valley Food Coalition, which includes Common Wealth Inc., Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, Grow Youngstown, Goodness Grows, Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and Ohio State University Extension’s Mahoning County office.

To read the full story at Vindy.com, click here.

Youngstown is working hard to promote local food and a farm-to-table approach to healthy eating.

On Wednesday, the federal government recognized those efforts by selecting the city for the new “Local Foods, Local Places” initiative. Youngstown is one of 26 communities picked from 316 applicants by a team of federal agencies.

As part of Wednesday’s announcement, representatives toured the Kitchen Incubator on Elm Street, which is just one part of a grand plan to develop a “green business district” on the north side.

The Youngstown Kitchen Incubator is still a work in progress. It has been open for about a year and is filled with used equipment getting a second life, including a 40-gallon kettle from the Austintown Local School District.

“You can rent time here which is much, much cheaper than setting up your own commercial kitchen. So you can work in a licensed facility and sell your food,” Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. Land Reuse Director Liberty Merrill said. “Certainly the goal is to use local foods to drive the economy here. That’s a lot of what the partnerships here, with all of the organizations have been about, creating jobs in the local food system.”

A lot of things are happening to build an economy around local food.

“Local food is great because food really brings people together. It’s really about sharing food with people, about your family and all those things. It’s really something that everybody can support,” Merrill said.

She said dollars that get spent on food go back into the community.

People can do everything at the Kitchen Incubator, from baking cookies and making soups to growing greens and herbs. It offers an answer to the challenge of growing a local food system, which is the processing of commodities.

“Help small entrepreneurs access the facilities at scale so they’re able to meet that increasing market demand,” USDA Deputy Secretary for Rural Development Doug O’Brien said.

O’Brien said this helped set Youngstown’s application apart. It brings together local food partners and the region’s agricultural assets.

“That will help them build on the great foundation and the vision of the local community and grow that vision to get better outcomes for the community,” O’Brien said.

And that vision already is in the works. In January, the Elm Street Café will open next to the Kitchen Incubator.

And in late spring, the Lake-to-River Food Cooperative will open across the street. Both will sell food made and grown in Youngstown.

“We don’t have anything in the local neighborhood and a lot of these people have to ride a bus and transfer buses to do their shopping. And now they can just walk to the store,” Jim Converse of Common Wealth Regional Development said. “It will be a neighbor-oriented grocery store but also will carry a lot of organic and naturally-grown products for people that don’t want to have to drive to Cleveland or Pittsburgh to find those things.”

The Lake-to-River Food Cooperative grocery store will sell items produced at the Kitchen Incubator, such as jams, jellies, sauces, soups and salads grown locally, as well as convenience items so people don’t have to go to a chain store like CVS.

Converse also is the manager of the Youngstown Farmers Market.

He hopes to connect more to the Youngstown State University campus and students.

“Help them kind of relearn what good local food is or learn for the first time in many cases. They’re a fast food generation and they’re going to be fat and die before their parents do probably in some cases,” Converse said.

He said the effort takses a positive approach to being healthy and eating healthy, noting there is a lot of growth downtown with restaurants, but he wants to bring that growth to other neighborhoods like the north side.

It is efforts like these that got Washington’s attention and will propel this movement into the future.

“Well it is putting feet on all the rhetoric about local food,” Converse said.

“This is about, how does the federal government work with local communities to help them achieve their dreams in a very simple, straightforward manner,” Appalachian Regional Commission Federal co-chair Earl Gohl said.

The “Local Foods, Local Places” grant has two parts. The first is technical support with access to experts and information. There will be a workshop and a planning report issued.

The Appalachian Regional Commission will provide $20,000 to help make those goals reality. But the award is more about expertise and assistance and less about money.

The timeline is all up to the local groups involved in the process.

To see the full story from WKBN, click here.

A successful partnership between urban and rural growers, processors and distributors helped convince federal authorities that the Mahoning Valley is headed in the right direction in regards to revitalizing its economy through local food initiatives.

"It's people who are willing to step forward, to take risks, to collaborate, to give others credit and then share the same vision for a better future for their community," observed Doug O'Brien, deputy undersecretary for rural development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "I can see that that's happening here in Youngstown."

O'Brien and other officials visited the Common Wealth Inc. kitchen incubator at 907 Elm St. Wednesday to formally announce a $20,000 grant to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. that would be used for developing a local and regional plan to improve access and production of locally grown foods.

YNDC is one of just 26 winners of the federal government's Local Foods, Local Places grant program. In addition to funding, the program provides critical counsel and support for building a regional food production and distribution system geared to improving the local economy, O'Brien said.

"Some of the things that can be learned from across the country are the different kinds of marketing and technology," O'Brien said. "Another thing we're seeing is institutional buying – a lot of times that's colleges and universities that will lead the way."

The program is funded through a consortium of federal agencies that includes the USDA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the Delta Regional Authority.

YNDC was the lead applicant for the award, but the program would benefit all of the local food organizations that have initiatives under way, said Liberty Merrill, land reuse director at YNDC.

"The real need of the grant is the planning process, and they're going to be helping us with that," Merrill said. "The ultimate objective is creating jobs through the local food system -- the more we can push that, the more we can make this not only a community driver, but an economic driver."

Creating a local food system that networks urban communities with the rural areas is important for the region's economic potential and the revitalization of its neighborhoods, said Ed Fendley, Local Foods, Local Places program manager at the EPA.

"You are headed in that direction," he said. "We're excited."

Developing a local food network also means that residents know where their food is being processed, raised or grown, an element that has been lost over the years since Big Ag has dominated the farm movement, said Jim Converse, executive director for Common Wealth Inc.

"We need to take control of that and hold onto that," he said of the local food movement, emphasizing the need for more entrepreneurial efforts among local growers. "Recreating a local food system that's vibrant, that's healthy and ties people together is a big piece of that."

Earl Gohl, co-chairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission, noted that Youngstown's plan has created a model that holds great potential in developing a successful local food ecosystem. "There's a lot of energy, a lot of commitment toward developing local food systems throughout the region," he said. "This is an attempt to work with local communities in what their dreams are and what their goals are."

The first part of the program is to gather all the stakeholders together -- such as YNDC, local growers, urban farmers, Common Wealth, Grow Youngstown and the Trumbull Neighborhood Development Partnership -- to develop a cohesive network plan. "The second part is to implement the plan. It's not going to pay for that program, it's intended to get it started so they can secure other public and private resources to move forward and complete their vision,” Gohl said.

Youngstown has developed a model that fits with the local food movement gaining momentum across the country, the USDA’s O'Brien said.

"It's about the fastest-growing part of the food infrastructure," he noted. "Small cities that don't have local food systems have a hard time attracting the young professionals back to town. It's what people expect now, it's part of the culture of the community."

To read the full story from the Business Journal, click here.

Today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) announced that the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation has been chosen as a winner of the Local Foods, Local Places grant award to provide access to healthy, local food for the residents of Youngstown.

Local Foods, Local Places provides economic opportunity for local farmers and supports community revitalization through the development of farmers markets, community gardens, and other local food initiatives in easily accessible locations. The Local Foods, Local Places program is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and the Delta Regional Authority (DRA).

“This federal support will help boost the availability of locally grown, fresh food,” Brown said. “Youngstown is a leader in local food enterprises and Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation will continue to help local producers expand their markets, create jobs, and strengthen the economy.”

A representative from Brown’s office attended the national announcement of the award, held at the Common Wealth Kitchen Incubator in Youngstown.

In 2010, Brown joined the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, community leaders, and anti-hunger advocates at Neighborhood Ministries in Youngstown to discuss legislative efforts aimed to combat childhood hunger and promote access to nutritious foods in Ohio schools and underserved communities. Following his meeting, Brown later introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, which he successfully passed in the 2014 Farm Bill. Brown’s bill helps Ohio farmers and ranchers sell their products directly to consumers and creates jobs by addressing production, aggregation, and marketing and distribution needs. It also ensures that consumers have better access to nutritious, locally-grown food.

Brown is Ohio’s first senator to serve on the Senate Agriculture committee in more than 40 years and was a member of the 2014 Farm Bill Senate conference committee.

To read the full story from Senator Sherrod Brown, click here.