Neighborhoods

Friday, December 4, 2015

On Thursday, December 3, more than 50 residents and stakeholders attended the Wick Park neighborhood planning meeting to share input on strategies to revitalize the neighborhood.

The input and feedback will be used in the development of the Wick Park Neighborhood Action Plan, which will be released in early 2016. Strategies recommended by those in attendance included neighborhood signage, vacant lot maintenance, reforestation, bike lanes, demolition, and opening a neighborhood cafe.

Mahoning Valley civic leaders rolled out the red carpet for 22nd Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Stayce Harris at a community welcome luncheon held at Squaw Creek Country Club here, Dec. 4, 2015.

Harris briefly visited nearby Youngstown Air Reserve Station, affectionately known as YARS to those assigned there and the local community, in August 2015 to observe the 910th Airlift Wing’s inaugural multi-unit C-130 Round-Up. At that time, she planned to come back to the installation for the wing’s December Unit Training Assembly. On this return trip she was able to stay longer, and this time the local community was ready to welcome the 22nd Air Force commander in style.

Approximately 50 civic leaders including local business magnates, leaders of the Valley’s two state colleges and a group of local and state legislators gathered for the event, hosted by Ron Klingle and presented by Avalon Golf and Country Club in cooperation with the Youngstown Air Reserve Base Community Council.

Ohio State District 63 Representative Sean O’Brien spoke on behalf of the Mahoning Valley delegation as they presented the general with a state of Ohio pennant that had been flown over the statehouse in Columbus.

“We wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Mahoning Valley and thank you for the great work the 910th Airlift Wing, 22nd Air Force and the Air Force Reserve do here for us,” O’Brien said. “They are so important to our community in Northeast Ohio, to many people and places around the country and to our National Defense.”

Harris noted she routinely visits the nine Air Force Reserve wings under her command, which include 15,000 Reservists and 105 aircraft. During this particular visit, she shared a message with local civic leaders and the community at large through a valley media outlet about the 910th Airlift Wing’s future.

“The station’s future is intact and number one,” Harris said. “It’s because of the community support. It’s due to people being vocal and saying what they contribute and also because of the very unique spray mission that is here. That exists solely in the Reserve, supporting FEMA and just doing great work across our nation.”

The 22nd Air Force commander was referring to the 910th Airlift Wing’s role as home to the Department of Defense’s only large-area, fixed wing aerial spray capability. She also said she has flown the C-130, the tactical cargo transport aircraft assigned to YARS. She calls it a workhorse aircraft for the Air Force, since it can carry troops and cargo and be quickly converted to carry out many different missions including the 910th’s aerial spray mission.

Harris also said she was impressed by the relationship shared between the 910th and its neighbors “outside the fence.”

“The Youngstown Air Reserve Station is so phenomenal,” said Harris. “You’re looking at the private-public partnership. You’re looking at the community supporting our Reservists when they deploy and assisting their families every single day. We’re so pleased to be a part of this community and look forward to it for many years to come.”

To read the full story from the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, click here.

City leaders in Youngstown are facing a growing problem that is getting more difficult to tackle – trash dumping.

A viewer sent WKBN 27 First News an image of trash strewn across Vittoria Avenue in Youngstown. It’s a problem in other parts of the city, too. Remote areas are being used as a dumping ground for everything from kitchen waste to home remodeling debris.

Charles Morgan lives just a couple blocks from the corner of Wardle and Vittoria avenues on Youngstown’s east side. He drives by the mess every day.

“This is my home, and I don’t like seeing my home like this. I was born here, and I don’t like it like this,” Morgan said.

Doors, carpeting, paint and dry wall litter the street. The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office handles environmental crimes, but fighting the problem can be difficult. Major Jeff Allen said there is a grant to pay for just one deputy’s salary, but the problem is much bigger than one person can handle.

“It is very difficult to catch people dumping in areas that are remote and there are not a lot of houses. Streets that are vacant is where they go dump. He has to be there to catch them,” Allen said.

Youngstown Councilwoman Annie Gillam said trash dumping is not a new problem. At one point, the city purchased surveillance cameras hoping to catch dumpers in the act. But officials admit they don’t have enough of them to watch everything. Jennifer Jones with Youngtown Litter Control agrees saying the cameras help, but the problem is one that moves around and cameras can’t see it all.

But even if dumpers are caught, the potential penalties are not very severe. Jones says that dumpers may get caught once and have to pay a $100 fine and clean up the mess, but they are getting away with the 20 to 30 other times they dumped and didn’t get caught.

The problem is so prevalent that Youngstown Mayor John McNally is considering an idea that’s already been tried on a portion of Loveless Avenue on the south side where they completely blocked off the street. He is also considering grinding up the asphalt and creating a green space.That approach could be used in other parts of the city.

To see the full story from WKBN, click here.

What if the next big thing in blight elimination is to think small?

Staff at the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) think that just might be the case.

They have even coined a new term to describe their strategy: asset-based micro-planning. “We made the term up,” said YNDC Executive Director Ian Beniston about micro-planning.

YNDC came up with the strategy “because there are large areas of the city that are very distressed but we still wanted to have a starting place for some concrete revitalization.”

It’s common for cities to develop revitalization plans that leverage major anchor institutions, like hospitals or universities, as the locus from which reinvestment radiates out. These “eds and meds” attract large numbers of people and significant capital to a community and can be powerful, natural partners for neighborhood planning.

But many neighborhoods—and some entire cities—lack traditional anchors. With asset-based micro-plans, the idea is that even in neighborhoods with very weak markets, large numbers of vacant properties, and no traditional anchor institutions, there are nonetheless small, hyper-local assets. These assets act, if not as full-fledged anchors, then as mini-anchors that help to keep the block from drifting toward further destabilization. These assets can, Beniston argues, be leveraged to encourage small-scale revitalization.

Neighborhood mini-anchors could be gardens, small churches, community centers, or public libraries. In YNDC’s first micro-plan, the asset is the Taft Elementary school.

“When thinking about the condition of the overall neighborhood, it can be overwhelming,” said Beniston. “This provides a starting point.”

Rather than working on the neighborhood level, a micro-plan only looks at the two-to-three block radius around the community asset. This hyper-small scale encourages goal-setting that is realistic and timely. “Instead of making a pie-in-the-sky plan that we don’t have the resources for,” said Beniston, “starting with a micro-plan provides a building block that we can incrementally chip away at to make progress.” With the Taft Elementary School, YNDC has done just that.

Taft Elementary School: The mini-anchor

Taft Elementary School is located in the Lansingville neighborhood on Youngstown’s south side. Like much of Youngstown, the area around Taft Elementary School has seen massive disinvestment and population decline over the past 50 years. Between 1990-2011, poverty in the area increased threefold, and housing vacancy increased five-fold. One in five houses in the area is vacant, a rate roughly equal to that of the city as a whole.

According to a neighborhood Market Value Analysis of the micro-asset zone, the area to the West of the elementary school is extremely weak, with very high vacancy rates, and some of the highest crime rates in the city. The area to the East of the school, however, is identified as constrained, a stronger but still very weak market designation, and has somewhat lower crime and vacancy rates.

Generally in a constrained area, housing rehab is a prioritized strategy, whereas in weak and extremely weak areas, board ups, demolitions, and code enforcement are the priorities. Because the micro-plan is so small however, market conditions don’t change much from one side of the area to the other. In other words, the micro-asset straddles the “stronger” edge of a very weak market and the “weaker” edge of the stronger constrained market. So, strategies are more or less the same throughout the whole micro-plan area.

That being said, a significant majority of the prioritized board-ups and demolitions are taking place in a section that is labeled extremely weak.

Community Engagement

A vacant home near Taft Elementary SchoolThe start (and middle and end) of YNDC’s micro-planning process is strong community engagement. “We did initial surveys and meetings, and just asked people what they thought the major problems in the community were,” said Tricia D’Avignon, an Americorps VISTA working on this project for YNDC.

Since the school is the mini-anchor in this community, YNDC wanted to closely engage with everyone connected to the institution to determine the best path forward. YNDC surveyed the students, and has worked closely with the principal and the PTA.

“We want to be present in the neighborhood,” said Beniston, “and we try to meet people where they are.”

At one community meeting in March 2014, residents were asked to tell YNDC “one thing they needed to know” about the neighborhood. Residents resoundingly responded that blight was a top priority for them. One resident said, “Help us prevent our neighborhood from being just another blight-ridden place – we are a sustainable neighborhood! Let’s keep it that way.”

Three priorities arose based on the community’s responses: housing and property issues, infrastructure repair and maintenance, and crime and safety concerns.

With these goals in mind, YNDC set off to collect the data it needed in order to strategically tackle the community’s needs.

Gathering the Data

“We collected a lot of data,” said Tricia D’Avignon.

In order to make informed decisions, YNDC needed to have complete information about the area in question. Throughout the spring and summer of 2014, they looked at data on housing and other property issues, as well as code violations. They conducted a full field survey, taking pictures of every property in the area.

The community residents had identified poor infrastructure as a major concern, and so YNDC also surveyed the whole area to assess issues like sidewalk condition and unused posts without signage.

Eventually, YNDC was able to put together a map detailing the condition of each property, and, from that, a map that detailed the strategy needed for individual properties. That’s right: at the micro-plan level, there’s a strategy for every single property.

With the data in hand, YNDC was able to set realistic five-year benchmarks. “The micro-plans do a good job of not being too utopian,” said Beniston, but at such a manageable scale, there’s a chance to make a real impact. For example, housing benchmarks for the area include: bringing 10 housing units into code compliance, demolishing 13 blighted structures, and boarding 8 vacant and formerly blighted properties.

Prioritization is Key

Because YNDC has limited resources, though, prioritization is key to the success of the micro-plan. Through their research, YNDC identified 20 priority properties, 10 of which are slated for demolition, and the other 10 for board-up.

When picking priority properties, YNDC sought those that were closest to the school and in the worst condition. That way, the school’s influence as a neighborhood cleat will no longer be encumbered by blighted properties. Students won’t have to walk past vacant, dilapidated structures.

YNDC also took crime into account. Some properties were hotspots for criminal activity, the worst of which was the site of 19 crimes between 2011 and 2013. By targeting addresses like these for code enforcement sweeps and working with the police department to conduct door-to-door community policing efforts, where officers are having meaningful engagement with community members, YNDC can make progress toward the community’s goal of safer streets.

Community Partnerships

YNDC is always looking for new partnerships and new ways engage the community. “We’re building our overall capacity by bringing more partners into the fold,” said Beniston. The City of Youngstown has been a strong partner to YNDC throughout the process, funding much of the board-up and clean-up work and helping with implementation. YNDC has also engaged with community groups, students, and parents to clean and secure vacant properties during a day of service, and has partnered with the local 4H Club to plant community gardens on vacant lots.

YNDC, however, is also thinking outside the box. In July 2015, YNDC, working with the City, began a partnership with the local 910th Airlift Wing, US Air Force Reserve to conduct training exercises to demolish vacant properties. To the best of Community Progress’ knowledge, this is the first partnership of its kind, though other cities are interested in following suit. The reservists plan to demolish twelve vacant properties in Youngstown. While some residents may be hesitant to embrace this type of intervention, the partnership offers a unique chance for neighborhoods to get rid of eyesores that may have been vacant for years. A recent news report quoted Master Sgt. Brian Phillips saying, “This gives us a great opportunity to actually work in the community, get hands-on training and real world experience.” It’s an innovative partnership that pays dividends for both parties.

The micro-plan also recommended utilizing Safe Routes to School, a national model that advocates for making walking and biking to school a safe and attractive choice for students. This is particularly important for Taft Elementary because over 90% of its students bike or walk to school. So, in the months after the micro-plan was completed in October 2014, as YNDC began to work on implementation, they partnered with the Taft Elementary School and the local health department to apply for a grant through Safe Routes to School.

In November 2014, YNDC conducted a survey of students and parents to determine what routes children were taking to get to school, and then collected data on the infrastructure and presence of vacant properties along those routes through walk audits.

By July 2015, YNDC received news that their Safe Routes to School grant application for infrastructure upgrades in the Taft School area was approved for $200,000!

Additionally, the success of the Taft plan has recently prompted the local United Way to adopt the school and greater neighborhood as its first Promise Neighborhood, which will bring more resources and partners to the table to help further revitalization efforts started by the micro-plan.

Micro-Planning Going Big?

While micro-planning may be small by definition, there are big plans for it in Youngstown.

“YNDC and the City of Youngstown will continue to use asset-based micro-planning and implementation to begin the process of neighborhood improvement in many of the city’s weak and extremely weak neighborhoods,” said Beniston. In fact, work is already underway on several new plans.

In addition to the Taft Elementary School plan, YNDC finished and began implementing a micro-plan this past January, centering on the MLK Elementary School in the northeast corner of the city. In the spring, residents, volunteers, and the YNDC came together to clean up and secure 19 homes the micro-plan prioritized. Work continued throughout the rest of the year and has now been wrapped up.

YNDC also finished surveying for two more plans earlier this year, centering on a high school and a park, respectively, and have started work on the latter, which centers around Wick Park just to the north of the University.

While YNDC wants to remain sharply focused on the mini-anchors at first, it also hopes that each micro-plan can begin expand in its scope as it meets success. “The starting point is the micro target area,” said Beniston, “but as we are successful making progress in the micro target area we will update the plan to a larger area.”

The implications of this work don’t end at the Youngstown city limits. Cities all across the country that are dealing with extreme disinvestment and abandonment can take a cue from YNDC.

“I believe this is an emerging, common-sense model for communities across the country to consider when beginning work in very distressed neighborhoods,” said Beniston.

To read the full story from the Community Progress Blog, click here. 

City Council President Charles Sammarone said it was a “sad day” because four council members were at their last meeting in that official capacity.

“I hate to see you leave,” Sammarone, a former mayor, said to the four at Wednesday’s meeting. “We’ve had our differences over the years, but we’ve worked them out.”

The four members weren’t able to run this year for re-election because of the city’s term-limits law that limited them to two consecutive four-year terms. They are Annie Gillam, D-1st; Paul Drennen, D-5th; Janet Tarpley, D-6th; and John R. Swierz, D-7th. The departures, which are official Dec. 31, mean there will be a majority of new members on the seven-person council starting Jan. 1.

At the meeting, council voted to accept an $83,843 state grant that – combined with $16,000 from the city – will be used to make improvements to the multipurpose building and pavilion at Crandall Park on the city’s North Side. Some of the money could be used for a nature trail.

Council also authorized the board of control to waive a $5,150 water tap-in fee for Safe House Ministries, which is planning a $2.8 million project at 3164 Eastview Ave. The agency provides residential, mental health and social service assistance to youths.

Meanwhile, T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s director of community planning and economic development, told council the city will advertise Monday for proposals for the former Bottom Dollar Food store property on Glenwood Avenue. The store was closed a year ago when ALDI Inc. purchased Bottom Dollar. The city sold the property to Bottom Dollar in 2010. ALDI gifted the property to the city in October.

The city will seek proposals for the property with a strong preference to those with plans to use it as a grocery store, Woodberry said.

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

Members of the Western Reserve Port Authority received an update Wednesday from representatives of the Youngstown Air Reserve Station and the local commission established to help preserve the airbase and other local military assets.

At its monthly meeting, the port authority’s board of directors heard from Air Force Col. James Dignan, commander of the 910th Airlift Wing stationed at YARS; John Rossi, president of the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber Foundation; and Vito Abruzzino, head of the Eastern Ohio Military Affairs Commission.

In March, the port authority approved annual contributions of $25,000 to the Chamber Foundation to support the commission.

The commission is “vital” to the Mahoning Valley, Dignan said.

“When I got here, I realized our base wasn’t involved in the Valley as it should have been and vice versa,” he remarked. In Seattle, where he was stationed previously, a local business group “looked after the health and well being of the military, and it’s huge there, billions of dollars” in the greater metropolitan area, he said.

“There was nobody looking out that had a vision of the economic impact, the long-term viability and the sustainability of the military assets that are here,” he continued. He eventually approached Rossi and suggested it as a function of the chamber.

At one point, the base had 16 aircraft and had a direct economic impact on the Valley of about $200 million annually. “Now we’re at eight airplanes with about $97 million of economic impact. That’s huge and that happened unbeknownst to the business community by and large herein the Valley,” he said. “How did that happen? Because we didn’t have this kind of advocacy.”

Abruzzino, an attorney who served with U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, says he sees the commission’s mission as twofold.

One mission is getting to discuss the continued viability of local military assets, their investment in the community and other issues. “One of the most difficult things is getting people into the room to sit down and talk about these issues. Everybody’s busy, everybody’s got stuff to do,” he said.

The other “critically important” mission is ensuring continuity of message. “As most of you in this room know, we have been very blessed with having Col. Dignan over the last several years. He’s really taken a grab of the community and really taken ahold of the mission and trying to say, ‘YARS is here and we’re going to continue to support the community and be involved,’ ”Abruzzino said.

“There’s no guarantee that’s going to happen with the next commander we get here,” he continued. That continuity of message needs to be there and that’s something the Military Affairs Commission is going to be making sure absolutely happens.”

Commanders sign a contract of up to three years for an assignment, Dignan said. He reaches his three-year point Feb. 21 and has asked to remain through summer, he said.

Topics the commission will cover through its agenda in 2016 include C-130 upgrades, base realignment and closure status, improving the demographics a BRAC commission would eventually look at, adjacent land issues and encroachment, and continued partnerships with the local community though blight removal, emergency response training and other activities, Abruzzino said.

One of the initiatives the commission is pursuing is to secure funds to purchase the former air cargo building at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, Dignan said. “We’ve got support at all levels. Now we’ve just got to tie it all together to buy that port authority property for the cargo facility on the other side,” he remarked. “I want to see ‘Air Force Reserve’ painted on that building hopefully before 2016’s out, hopefully shorter than that.”

The main use would be for an embarkation/debarkation terminal for personnel and equipment, said Dan Dickten, director of aviation at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.

“We couldn’t get air cargo in there. We tried. It’s just not in the cards, at least at this point,” he said. “We’re trying to get it back into aeronautical use, which this does.” In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross are interested in storing equipment and supplies there, he said.

State funds are being sought to purchase the building for YARS. “It’s basically the community that’s buying the building from us,” Dickten said. The port authority is seeking $1.26 million for the building, he said.

The commission has established four working groups focusing on military value, Ohio support, community support partnership and veterans and personnel, Rossi said.

The community support program’s efforts include the blight removal effort in Youngstown, which has torn down about 80 vacant houses in the city and hung 800 street signs.

“This particular program has actually served as a model,” Rossi said. At out-of-town conferences, representatives partners including Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. have been told the initiative has “really set a benchmark with this program,” Rossi said.

“We’re happy about that and we’re looking forward to continuing that work, moving up into Trumbull County and addressing some of the blight issues around the downtown area and gateway cleanups into our cities are also on the agenda,” he added.

Dickten also told the board members that the 14-day comment period had ended for the show cause order recommending issuance of a certificate of public service that will allow Aerodynamics Inc. to provide flights between Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the regional airport. The U.S. Department of Transportation has six days as of yesterday to respond.

According to Mickey Bowman, ADI’s vice president of airline services, an objection filed claiming the airline had defaulted on a $400,000 loan “does not appear to present a challenge at this point,” Dickten reported.

“Hopefully next week we’ll have some good news,” he said.

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

Friday, December 18, 2015

On Tuesday, December 15th, YNDC was awarded $6,000 for its AmeriCorps REVITALIZE program from First Place Community Fund and Kennedy Family Fund through the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley. 

The funds will be utilized for training AmeriCorps members with additional construction skills for future employment.

The city is requesting proposals from those interested in buying the vacant former Bottom Dollar grocery store at 2649 Glenwood Ave., with preference to be given to plans to reopen it as a grocery store.

“We need to get that location reopened simply because of the accessibility of that store to an entire market of citizens who don’t have sufficient access to a grocery store,” said Mayor John A. McNally.

“I’m not looking to put in a convenience store; I’m looking for a full-service grocery,” he added. “We need more grocery stores, and that’s going to be one of our biggest focuses in 2016.”

“That area remains a food desert without a store there,” said Sarah Lown, public finance manager at the Western Reserve Port Authority and a former economic- development specialist for the city.

About 74 percent of city residents live in food deserts, which Youngstown State University defines as urban areas more than one mile from a full-service grocery store.

The city will accept proposals for the Glenwood Avenue store until noon Feb. 1 in its finance department.

Those interested may tour the store from 3 to 4 p.m. Jan. 5 and 19. There is no established minimum price.

The 18,000-square-foot store, built on the 5.1-acre site in 2011, has been unused since January 2015 and now has no equipment or shelving in place.

ALDI Inc., which acquired 66 former Bottom Dollar stores, including this one, has turned this store over to the city.

The city bought the land from the city school district and sold it to Bottom Dollar for construction of the $1.5 million store.

City officials estimate the 8,354 households in the Glenwood Avenue corridor collectively spend $25.2 million annually on food, excluding restaurant and fast-food purchases.

Median annual household income in the Glenwood corridor for 2013, however, was only $30,029 a year, compared with the national median of $51,939.

“It’s got everything against it,” said David Livingston, managing partner in DJL Supermarket Location Research of Milwaukee, who has 34 years’ experience as a supermarket location consultant.

The shortage of grocery stores in Youngstown stems from “perceived and real crime taking place, excessive shoplifting, increased security costs” and difficulty finding employees, he said.

“If the city wants to make that location viable, they have to make sure that the new owner doesn’t have to pay any type of property taxes,” he said, adding that a potential buyer also may want an interest-free loan to re-equip the store.

Livingston also suggested a variance to allow the use of food stamps to buy prepared foods there and having the grocery store provide catered food for school lunches.

Lown said those suggestions might be accomplished. She said pursuing institutional markets for the store’s prepared foods, such as schools, after-school programs, day-care centers and churches, makes sense.

She said she knows of no provision in Ohio law, however, that would permit Livingston’s suggestion of making the store a sales-tax-free zone.

Livingston said net-profit margins for stores such as Bottom Dollar and ALDI are only 1 percent to 3 percent, and that the Glenwood store likely would need $100,000 to $120,000 in weekly sales volume to break even.

Average daily traffic counts near the store are 10,080 vehicles on Glenwood Avenue, 9,210 on Canfield Road and 5,360 on West Indianola Avenue, the city said.

Lown, who lives in Boardman, said those high-traffic counts are in the store’s favor and that the location would be a convenient stopping point for Boardman and Canfield residents on their way home from work.

“For a market like that, where prices were reasonable, that should be pretty viable,” she said of the location.

“There are promising developments up and down the Glenwood corridor,” Lown said, referring to the urban revitalization efforts of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.

Bottom Dollar contributed to the neighborhood’s stabilization, she said.

Lown, who said she shopped alone twice a month at the Glenwood Bottom Dollar store, said the staff and customers were courteous and accommodating and that she never felt uncomfortable there from a security standpoint.

The mayor added the Glenwood store was successful. “It attracted citizens not only from the immediate area, but also attracted customers from other areas around the city,” he said.

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

Phil Kidd was serving in the Army when he first heard of the Youngstown 2010 plan being put together more than a decade ago.

Kidd, who grew up in Pittsburgh, became involved in student government at Youngstown State University where he learned more about the community. While in the Army, he read about the 2010 planning process and decided to return here.

Kidd, today associate director of Youngstown CityScape, also owns the Youngstown Nation store downtown. “The greatest contribution was the energy it created, which got the ball rolling for a lot of the progress happening now,” he says.

Organizations such as Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., much of the downtown investment and the development of the various neighborhood groups throughout the city were “born out of the energy and the idea behind Youngstown 2010,” he observes.

Adopted by the city a decade ago, the Youngstown 2010 plan is not so much a roadmap to be rigorously followed than a compass pointing it in the direction it wants to go, advocates say.

Youngstown 2010 was never intended to be a plan with a “heavy-handed” approach that urban renewal plans of the past took, says William D’Avignon, director of the city community development agency.

“The whole concept was it’s really important to make sure that resources are being allocated to stabilize certain areas and that long-term investments aren’t being made in areas [where] the market [has] already spoken,” he continues.

Several concepts within the plan have come to fruition over the years, including the development of a downtown residential community and linking downtown with Youngstown State University.

Still, the main way Youngstown 2010 continues to play a role is neighborhood planning, particularly through YNDC, says Mayor John McNally.

“Neighborhood plans have come about in 10 to 12 different neighborhoods across the city, where YNDC and city staff have sat down with the neighborhood groups and churches and whoever wants to try to help. I think that’s a positive outgrowth,” McNally continues. “We’ve seen neighborhood groups across the city take renewed pride in their city.”

Cleveland and Pittsburgh have had neighborhood improvement organizations for decades, Kidd points out. Before Youngstown 2010, the city “didn’t have organizations like YNDC that can actually do the implementation of things.”

The plan inspired the Raymond John Wean Foundation to shift its funding priorities to building community capacity, neighborhood development corporations, planning and implementation, he says.

A core concept was the “shrinking city,” the premise that the city could essentially shutter neighborhoods as the houses within them were abandoned, cutting utility and city services to the abandoned streets. That was the most heralded aspect of the plan. And its most challenging.

Such a loss of population happens chaotically and “doesn’t lend itself to any kind of real, implementable ways of dealing with what’s left behind,” D’Avignon says. “Unfortunately, the only things that are shrinking in Youngstown, still to this date, are its tax base and, although I think it’s slowing down significantly, the population loss.”

As with Kidd, Youngstown 2010 inspired Dominic C. Marchionda, city-university planning coordinator at the YSU Center for Urban and Regional Studies. “It definitely had a major impact on why I chose to make decisions that would allow me to return home and work, as well as many of my colleagues in the area,” he says.

“Most importantly, it showed me that no matter how much this city has suffered, Youngstown and its people are resilient and that resilience is what will bring more [people] back home to help tell the greatest comeback story for a city of our size and suffering.”

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

Monday, January 4, 2016

YNDC is seeking applicants for seasonal employees (30-40 hours per week) at $13 per hour for grass cutting, vacant property cleanup, and basic construction.

A full job description is available for download below.

Must have VALID driver's license and be DRUG FREE.

To apply send resume and cover letter to info@yndc.org.