Neighborhoods

For the past two years Barack Obama has name-checked Youngstown, in his State of the Union addresses.

The President has pointed to the potential that advanced manufacturing has to remake a city still trying to recover from the collapse of the steel industry nearly forty years ago. ideastream’s David C. Barnett recently paid a visit to the former industrial powerhouse, searching for signs of new life.

Brandon and Mark LaMoncha show examples of auto parts that were Jim Cossler is CEO of the Youngstown Business Incubator Federal Reserve economist Joel Elvery notes that the promise of new technology comes with a cost Presley Gillespie of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation says the city's redevelopment seems to stop at the edge of downtown

Civic leaders like to point to the Youngstown Business Incubator (or YBI) as evidence that the old steel town is making a comeback. As CEO of YBI, Jim Cossler plays Mother Hen to a collection of tech start-up firms in some old downtown buildings, long abandoned, but now buzzing with activity.

SOUND OF COSSLER GIVING TOUR: We’ve gone from two-and-a-half floors in this five-story building in 2001, to over 120,000 square feet in four buildings --- all interconnected. [BEEP SWIPE IN] UNDER:

The Incubator’s most successful hatchling is Turning Technologies, a multi-million-dollar operation that designs audience response systems used for everything from business meetings to TV quiz shows. The federal government recently moved a new operation onto the YBI campus, perhaps hoping that some of the Incubator’s success will rub off.

OBAMA CLIP: “We created our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio. A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.

Known as “America Makes”, the $70-million Institute is funding research projects that promote additive manufacturing --- more popularly known as 3D printing.

SOUND: 3D printer UP & UNDER

One of those projects involves Humtown Products, a small metal casting business, just south of the city. In a well-worn workroom off the main shop floor, an automotive part designed on a computer screen is being created by a print head that sprays successive layers of plastic on top of each other, gradually building up into a three dimensional object. Humtown CEO Mark Lamoncha still recalls his reaction when he first saw a 3D printer in action.

MARK LAMONCHA: I was astounded. It was beyond my imagination that you could do what you could see done here.

Humtown is part of a consortium that is exploring ways that this technology might replace more traditional metalworking processes. It could be a game-changer for parts manufacturers. But, Cleveland Federal Reserve economist Joel Elvery says those “coulds” and “mights” don’t necessarily herald a wave of economic development for Youngstown.

JOEL ELVERY: Many regions have tried but few have had successful harnessing of technology and federal research spending to really grow their region. It’s a difficult thing.

Moreover, Elvery suggests that all the cheerleading should be tempered by the reality that new technology comes with a cost.

JOEL ELVERY: One of the risks of this focus on manufacturing that the Obama administration’s had is that people have in mind that these plants are going to come, and these plants will have many, many jobs. The way that manufacturing works nowadays is that there are fewer and fewer people. And so, whereas you got an auto part plant in 1990, that might mean 500 jobs or 600 jobs. You get an auto parts plant now, that means 100-200 jobs.

Still, longtime Youngstown resident Presley Gillespie is optimistic about the potential for local jobs, and says it’s great to see downtown come alive with new shops, restaurants and apartments, catering to the young tech workers at the Incubator. But as Executive Director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, Gillespie says, he hasn’t seen any of that prosperity trickle outside the central city.

PRESLEY GILLESPIE: There are jobs, I believe, being created, and opportunities. But, we need to figure out how to make sure that those jobs are accessible by the residents that live in our neighborhoods, because we still have high concentrations of poverty

And the region still has an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, and lost 400 jobs last year. Youngstown has a ways to go, on the path to that comeback.

TAG: This story is the first chapter of an hour-long examination of the role of federal spending in rebuilding the U.S. economy. How government intervention helps and hurts entrepreneurs --- tonight at 9:00, here on 90.3.

To hear the full story from ideastream, click here.

Another farmers market will be sprouting in Youngstown.

During a meeting for the neighborhood around Fellows Riverside Gardens Tuesday night, a Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) representative talked about the new venture.

A Southside Farmers Market is scheduled to open in June. The venue will offer fresh produce and food vendor trucks.

Sophia Buggs of YNDC said "We'll have I want to say maybe seven to 15 vendors that are out there, all growing local, all growing sustainability and ready to put the smiles on the folks faces that are in the Idora area."

Buggs said that the market will be located on Glenwood Avenue near the new Glenwood Community Park that is between Sherwood and West LaClede Avenues.

The market is scheduled to open the evening of Tuesday June 10.

This will be in addition to the already established Northside Farmers Market.

To see the full story from WFMJ, click here.

The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. took center stage March 17 at the Wick Park Neighborhood Association’s monthly meeting. Members talked about the conditions of the neighborhood and asked residents what tops their list of concerns and priorities.

Rick Pollo has more.

A crowd of more than 60 residents of the city’s North side showed up for the sixth neighborhood meeting conducted by the YNDC. Residents of the Wick Park, Crandall Park and Brier Hill neighborhoods all voiced their concerns.

On the minds of most residents: Vacant homes, and trying to purchase them after they’ve gone into foreclosure. Peggy Gurney, a resident and secretary/treasurer for the Wick Park Neighborhood Association, says the process hinders potential new residents and homeowners.

GURNEY: I just feel like every time there’s a meeting like this, they always talk demolition. They say population is declining, which it is true, but they’re also going to great economic lengths to get people to move back to the city, but what kind of housing is there going to be for them to move back to?

Gurney says the purchasing process is long and tedious, ultimately discouraging potential property buyers.

GURNEY: If they would move the process along so that people who really care about the housing stock can buy the houses, renovate them and sell them to the people that are moving back into the city.

YNDC neighborhood planner Tom Hetrick says the issue of vacant homes is a recurring topic across the city, and one the YNDC plans to analyze.

HETRICK: It’s definitely something we’ve been hearing a lot. Some of the top priorities that have come out of the meetings is housing, code enforcement, demolition-related. These are things that we’re going to have to sit down and examine in more depth, see what can be done to streamline them.

The next meeting will be March 20 at the Faith Community Covenant Church, 1919 E. Midlothian Blvd.

To hear the full story from The News Outlet, click here.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

On Wednesday, March 19th, YNDC Deputy Director Ian Beniston spoke on a panel entitled "Lessons from Youngstown – Planning for a Smaller, Greener City" as part of the University of Michigan Ford School's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) Lecture Series.

Other panelists included Hunter Morrison, one of the planners who led "Youngstown 2010" and now Executive Director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, and John Russo, Visiting Research Fellow at Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute and co-author of Steeltown. June Thomas and Margaret Dewar, professors of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Michigan's Taubman College and co-editors of The City After Abandonment, moderated the discussion. The panel discussed Youngstown's innovative "2010 Plan," which accepted that Youngstown would not grow yet could still become a better, smaller city and what Youngstown has learned over the past decade in the process of implementing that plan. 

To read more about the panel, click here.

Youngstown is a small city in the hills of northeast Ohio, once famous for steelmaking; and sadly, if famous for anything today, for economic distress and population loss.

From a peak population of about 175, 000, it’s down today to maybe 65,000. In any event, last week I was in Youngstown talking about revitalization, and it made me think about what it would take to rebuild a city like Youngstown. And along with that, a question: what does the future hold for a city like Youngstown, which has few impressive assets, and can’t piggyback its revival on its proximity to a thriving big city, or its being in a strong, growing region?

When one looks at the small—say, with populations under 120,000—older industrial cities, the smaller counterparts of a Pittsburgh or a Baltimore, one doesn’t see too many success stories. And the ones that come to mind tend to be ‘piggyback’ stories, like Lowell, Mass., which has benefited from being in the Boston area and the fact that you can get to Boston North Station by train in 45 minutes. Another one is Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which took advantage of the fact that it was in the middle of Lancaster County AKA Amish Country, with (according to the county web site) over 8 million visitors per year. I don’t want to suggest it was all about luck.

Both cities had dedicated leaders willing to work hard to carry out well-thought-out strategies, but they had some pretty powerful assets to work with. And in both cities, the revival, while real, is partial, and has yet to benefit many of the city’s residents. The Youngstown story is not all doom and gloom.

The city has been fairly effective in attracting industry, including a new state-of-the-art steel mill making steel pipe for the shale gas industry. There are a few signs of life in downtown Youngstown, including a wine bar, a hip-looking coffee place that roasts their own beans and makes a better-than-average latte, and some buildings that have been rehabbed into apartments mainly marketed to students at nearby Youngstown State.

A creative and energetic CDC, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC), has made gains in some of the city’s at-risk neighborhoods, and has recently been hired by the city to prepare Youngstown’s new master plan. This is good, but it’s not much. The city lost 15,000 people between 2000 and 2010, and is still losing people. Although the city has demolished around 4,000 houses over the past decade—or more than 10 percent of their inventory—nearly one-third of the ones that are left are empty. The median sales price for houses in the city was $20,000 in 2012, and taxes haven’t been paid on 30 percent of the properties in the city for two or more years. When Youngstown people get jobs in the steel mill—which only employs 350 people—or the other factories or warehouses that the city has attracted, most of them move to the nearby suburbs. Four out of five jobs in the city are filled by people who commute from out of town, and of the people who still live in the city, one-third are below the poverty level.

Piggybacking isn’t an option for Youngstown. It’s in a county that has been losing population and jobs countywide for the past decade or more—and hasn’t grown significantly since the 1960s. The nearest major cities, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, are both not only too far to be much use, but neither is like Boston or New York, dynamic enough to spin off economic activity beyond its borders. So, what’s a city to do?

Youngstown isn’t going to disappear. It’s not clear that everyone involved with the city fully understands that. Because what it means is not only that it’ll be around for a long time, but that ultimately, Youngstown’s future will depend on how attractive it is as a place for people to live. Downtown latte places and industrial parks are better than nothing, but as long as most people with a choice in the matter flee the city, the city will not begin to thrive again.

The other part is that the rest of Mahoning County, and the entire region, have to realize not only that Youngstown isn’t going away, but that their decline and that of the city are totally intertwined—and that the region isn’t going to revive until or unless Youngstown does (The same goes for Warren, Youngstown’s ‘twin city’ in Trumbull County to the north, which isn’t in much better shape). Without a strong, vital center in Youngstown, Mahoning County doesn’t have much going for it. It’s broken up into 6 cities, 7 villages and 14 townships, most of which have little real identity except that they’re ‘not Youngstown’. A number are starting to see deterioration taking place, and one has even reached out to YNDC for its help.

Without a vital urban center, a region like the Mahoning Valley has little to distinguish itself in the increasingly competitive national and global economy. If there is a place in the United States where people need to start thinking regionally, and recognize that the entire county has a stake in their central city’s future, it’s this stretch of northeast Ohio. This needs to go beyond thinking about regional economic development strategies to encompass regional growth and investment strategies that focus on building a strong center, along with sharing available public resources—which will always be far less than what is needed—in an equitable and efficient fashion.

This is a huge reach for any region, let alone one as fragmented and distrustful as the Mahoning Valley, which has spent decades fighting over crumbs. Even if they get there, though, there’s no guarantee it will succeed. But one can be pretty sure that without the region pulling together, it won’t.

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository)

To see the full story from Rooflines, click here. 

Youngstown, Ohio — a town that lost over 60 percent of its population since the 1960s — may be an emerging model of urban planning, panelists at a Ford School of Public Policy discussion Wednesday said.

The optimistic outlook on Youngstown has strong implications for the futures of Detroit and other transitioning cities throughout the country.

The Ford School’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy hosted a panel discussion titled “Lessons from Youngstown: Planning for a Smaller, Greener City” with about 40 community members Wednesday afternoon.

The panel featured Ian Beniston, Hunter Morrison and John Russo, all urban planning professionals involved in the Youngstown Project. Urban Planning Profs. Margaret Dewar and June Manning Thomas moderated the event.

Located among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Youngstown was a center for steel production until the industry began to decline in the 1970s. Urban planners have recently approached the city about looking for ways to redevelop a mid-sized city from a once larger metropolis.

Among the program's strengths, she said, are its vision of citizen engagement, clearly written plan, strong institutional support, ability to create capacity and, most notably, acceptance of its decline to a smaller city.

However, the program is challenged by population loss and decreasing resources, the difficulty in establishing for whom the main district exists and an inability to overcome racial dynamics.

“There’s a lot we can learn from this plan, there’s a lot we can learn about what a plan can and cannot do as well,” she said.

Dewar introduced the Youngstown 2010 Plan, which aimed to involve the community in enhancing the rapidly shrinking city. This differs from most urban plans, which generally focus on community and population growth.

Dewar said they had to define Youngstown’s role in the new regional economy, improve the city’s image and enhance the quality of life by making Youngstown a healthier place to live and work.

Russo, visiting research fellow at the Virginia Tech Research Center, was not as optimistic. He said despite the positive economic effects of the plan, it has forced Youngstown residents to realize the shortcomings in their city.

“There is a type of collateral damage that happens to a community, just not economically,” he said. “Now there is a sort of physical health problem, suicides, a sense of community agency, a sense of loss, a feeling of failure, a loss of pride and a sense of shame and all of these things are carrying the community.”

Russo also argued that urban planners neglected services and infrastructure in specific neighborhoods, often those that are heavily impoverished.

“What happened was that there were few relocation allowances and there were few residents who wanted to leave their home and the neighborhoods that were targeted for this were largely African American,” Russo said.

Hunter Morrison, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium Initiative, said one strategy the urban planners undertook was integrating Youngstown State University with the surrounding community. This work was accomplished by a partnership between the university and the city to develop the area within a half-mile radius of campus in order to promote shared spaces.

“As a result of that strategy we’ve seen increased investment and renovation of office buildings, housing, restaurants and the like, so this has become quite a vital area where ten years ago it was pretty much empty,” Morrison said.

Another problem was vacancy after the population drop. Outside of the bustling “anchor district,” the rest of the city was failed to develop.

Ian Beniston, deputy director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, said they developed a neighborhood-specific strategy and are currently using it to implement change on the city.

Beniston added that the creation of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation increased the community’s capacity for change, and underlined his optimism for the city’s future.

The final challenge was downsizing. When a community’s population declines, its resources and investment also decline, which further discourages residents to move or stay in the city.

“Services that people have come to expect get shed and it’s taken a long time for Youngstown to figure out a way around that problem,” Morrison said.

To see the full story from The Michigan Daily, click here.

Many people who are familiar with neighborhoods that make up the city’s 7th Ward likely will tell you that one defining feature is diverse demographics — in everything from population trends to home vacancies.

Such diversity was one of the themes running through Thursday’s Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. meeting at Faith Community Covenant Church, 1919 E. Midlothian Blvd., on the South Side.

About 60 elected officials and residents attended the seventh of nine such sessions in the city to gather people’s priorities, feedback and concerns regarding greater neighborhood stabilization in the city.

Their input will be used to develop detailed strategies and neighborhood plans against a backdrop of limited financial resources, noted Thomas A. Hetrick, a YNDC neighborhood planner.

Several trends vary widely in the 7th Ward’s neighborhoods, which are Lansingville, Powerstown and Buckeye Plat, Brownlee Woods, Boulevard Park and Cottage Grove, Hetrick explained. He also noted that the area’s assets include a large number of parks, places of worship and businesses, especially along Midlothian Boulevard and Youngstown-Poland Road.

For example, calls to police were significantly higher in the ward’s western section. Also, population loss varied considerably in the area, he continued.

More than 80 percent of the homes in Brownlee Woods were built after World War II, while other sections have a much-older housing stock, Hetrick noted, adding that Boulevard Park has the highest percentage of residents with college degrees.

By contrast, Cottage Grove and parts of Lansingville have seen higher rates of poverty and home vacancies, he said, adding that the entire ward saw a large increase in the number of home foreclosures after the recession.

Nevertheless, Hetrick said, “Vacancies are something that affects all parts of the 7th Ward.”

A big challenge is that Youngstown has been losing population every year since 1960, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Having fewer homebuyers usually leads to a higher number of vacancies, which often contributes to a decrease in home sales and values and an increase in neighborhood deterioration and home abandonment, Hetrick pointed out.

The average home price in the city was slightly more than $30,000 in 2007, before the economic downturn, and was $21,000 in 2013, he noted.

A few people expressed hope that enough city funds will be available to continue demolishing vacant homes, which encourage criminal activity.

One man complained about what he sees as a large amount of blight along South Avenue and said he hopes Mayor John A. McNally will follow through with efforts to tackle the problem.

“Work with us; please, just work with us,” he pleaded.

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

A woman who lives in the Lincoln Knolls section of the East Side spent several years investing some of her money into maintaining a vacant parcel next door to her with the intention of buying the lot.

Her plans were thwarted, however, when an out-of-state entity bought the property instead.

Her situation represents what many city residents say occurs too often: People from out of the area buy properties but fail to maintain or pay the taxes on them.

The woman, who didn’t wish to give her name, expressed her frustration during Tuesday’s Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. meeting at the East Branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, 430 Early Road.

She was part of a standing-room-only crowd of about 60 elected officials and residents who attended the latest in a series of one-hour gatherings throughout the city. The sessions are to collect people’s input, feedback, assessments and priorities for achieving neighborhood stabilization, organizers said.

The data will be used to develop comprehensive strategies aimed at improving neighborhoods’ vitality against a backdrop of limited city resources, noted Thomas A. Hetrick, a neighborhood planner.

The meeting focused on the East Side’s Lincoln Knolls, Lincoln Park/Hazleton, McGuffey Heights and East High sections.

Hetrick outlined several demographics, noting that much of the area has seen a population increase in the last 20 years, yet is among the least densely populated parts of the city.

Another trend is the decrease in the number of home mortgages coupled with relatively few foreclosures, he explained.

Parts of the East Side also have an increase in the number of properties owned by people or businesses from out of state, which often leads to an uptick in tax delinquencies, Hetrick continued.

Also, he said, the area has seen increases and decreases in the rate of childhood poverty since 1990, as well as the same pattern regarding calls to police.

One woman echoed a concern that organizers said has been brought up at every meeting: repairing potholes.

City council is exploring ways to come up with additional funding for that purpose, noted Councilwoman Janet Tarpley, D-6th.

Another resident worried about people who want to maintain their homes but lack the money, and another man said he felt money that should have been used to make repairs to Lincoln Park has been wasted.

The city has a certain amount of Community Development Block Grant money for limited repairs, noted Bill D’Avignon, the city’s director of community planning, adding that Interfaith Home Maintenance Service Inc. functions similarly.

In addition, Youngstown is working with the state to secure additional funds to repair bridges at Lincoln Park, said Councilman T.J. Rogers, D-2nd.

Three meetings remain. The next is at 6 p.m. Thursday at Oak Hill Collaborative, 507 Oak Hill Ave. on the South Side.

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

Residents of Youngstown’s 7th Ward attended the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.’s meeting March 20.

The 7th Ward covers Brownlee Woods, Cottage Grove, Park Boulevard, Lansingville and Powerstown. Rick Pollo has the story.

More than 60 residents of the city’s Southeast side showed up for YNDC’s neighborhood meeting.

Education was a hot topic, and is on the minds of some like Park Boulevard resident Terry Escarco.

ESCARCO: Until you improve the education in Youngstown, until parents, guardians and the kids take their education seriously and improve the graduation rate from 70 percent to 90, Youngstown will never improve.

Escarco blames the schools for population loss.

ESCARCO: People have left Youngstown because of the education. And people have also left Youngstown schools to charter schools.

Ohio has 389 charter schools. Youngstown has 13.

7th Ward Citizens Coalition board member Nick Durse agrees that a strong school district is key for maintaining and attracting residents.

DURSE: I think education is really where it starts and ends. People want to live in an area where there are good school systems for their kids.

Youngstown schools operate under an academic recovery plan after receiving some of the lowest grades in the state. The district remains under academic watch.

YNDC Program Coordinator Jack Daugherty says there’s no specific plan at the moment to improve the city’s schools, however, it will be addressed after more information is gathered.

DAUGHERTY: Certainly it’s an issue that the city faces as a whole and something that has come up in meetings and is something that we’re definitely going to discuss as time goes on.

YNDC’s next meeting will take place March 25 at the East Side Library.

To hear the full story from The News Outlet, click here.

More than 50 residents packed the East Side Library March 25th for the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.’s meeting. Topics including crime, drugs, vacant properties and a lack of city support were among the concerns raised by residents.

Rick Pollo has more.

As the YNDC continues with its city-wide meetings, issues of crime, vacancies and miscommunication between residents and city officials keep surfacing. And it’s no different for residents of the city’s East Side: the Lincoln Knolls neighborhood and surrounding areas.

Resident Victoria Valentine says a lack of police support has led to heightened crime in her neighborhood.

VALENTINE: “In my neighborhood, it’s crime. Not enough police to patrol the area. And when I say crime – there’s a lot of drugs.

She feels that if the city were to invest more money on developing Lincoln Park, children would not be exposed to drug-related activity near vacant properties.

VALENTINE: I would like to see if they could put some money in there. If they would work on that park alone, that would take a lot of the kids in there off the streets where they will not have to deal with the drugs.

Resident Abdul Harris says he’s taken measures into his own hands, but wishes the city would do more to assist.

HARRIS: I don’t want these properties being turned into a garbage dump. I decided to take over with my own money, my own equipment – and now they’re nice green spaces.

Youngstown City Planner Bill D’Avignon says resources are limited in tackling all the issues at once.

D’AVIGNON: When all else fails, it kind of falls on the city and it’s expected that we can deal with that issue but the issue is so large scale that we really don’t have the resources to address all of the abandonment issues. Part of this is to develop a priority, what is most important and where it’s most important.

YNDC’s next meeting will be March 27 at the Oak Hill Collaborative.

To hear the full story from The News Outlet, click here.