SitemapSome friends and I are having a backyard party Saturday, and you’re invited.
Breakfast, lunch, music, beverages and more. But fair warning, it’s not a normal gathering, yet it might be a tad more rewarding than most.
How it came together is the best story for me to tell because it showcases the talent and will of a corps of Valley residents I’ve seen all over our news pages, but have not been blessed to work with. Until this.
Saturday, we are cleaning up the backyard of the Boys and Girls Club on Oak Hill Avenue.
It’s a landscape cleanup as much as it is a trash effort.
The trash is the easy part. The landscape cleanup is, um, substantial. An area the size of three football fields has, over the years, gotten away from our group. We live on a slim budget of a nonprofit and have had our hands full just providing for 100 kids each day.
So thick is the backyard growth, people are stunned to realize The Club sits just off Market Street. Even the most frequent of Market Street drivers have no idea The Club sits behind a thick mass of trees and overgrowth. The 600 or so trees that need to come down are nuisance ground growth that have been allowed to grow to 20-plus feet high.
To a board of folks largely inexperienced with such work, it’s been an intimidating yard. But it also is to us a place that can be so much better for the kids and the neighborhood. The area was formerly Kyle Park. About 30 years ago, the park was given to the fledgling Club group.
Kyle looks like it was a special park at one point. Oddly, there is no reference to it in Vindicator story files. And not oddly for modest nonprofits, the Club has no records of the park or the handover.
Under 80-year-old trees are old posts that are as solid into the ground as the trees above them. They were tennis courts. An old basketball court is easy to find amid the weeds – its posts cut at ground level. Concrete pads for maybe a tetherball setup are there too, as is an old cement firepit. Well – that’s what we use it for now. Lord knows what it was used for 60 years ago. A gated entryway has been rusted closed for what looks like 40 years.
We aim to bring some of that back.
A basketball court is desired, among other things. That’s a dream. The reality right now is eliminating this mini forest that has grown up around us.
To the Club board, it was daunting.
But to the friends we did not know we had, this is a normal day in Youngstown.
Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., CityScape, YSUScape, Community Corrections Association and the City of Youngstown parks and codes staff and Mahoning County Green Team have been this brilliant assembly of urban tacticians who dissect such an effort down to a suburban backyard lawn mowing.
When we first stepped into the backyard to digest this, we were just a few car lengths from Market Street, yet invisible to any passer-by.
CCA boss Dave Stillwagon was the first to look at the mess of landscape and say something special could be done back here. YNDC’s Ian Benniston, CityScape’s Phil Kidd and city Parks Director Bob Burke would follow suit with the same belief.
By so many measures, Youngstown neighborhoods are a behemoth of blight – especially in the area the Boys and Girls Club calls home. Our city is like so many other aged manufacturing cities from Massachusetts to Michigan. I say that to frame that our situation is by no means unique, despite people wanting to moan “only in Youngstown.” If you say that, it’s more a sign that you need to read newspapers more often to know we’re not alone.
The blight is surmountable in some ways, even though it will never completely disappear. It’s about finding that gem of a homeowner or, in our case, a nonprofit, who wants to change.
What’s clear after just a few weeks of planning: It takes a hardy soul to weather the mass of challenges in cleaning up a landscape like our city. And through the groups above, we’re blessed with not just one soul, but an army of them. I mentioned three names just in the order they appeared. This effort goes 10 specialists deep. And each of them knows someone else to resolve every curve thrown. There are many when dealing with tires, brush, trash, volunteers, Dumpsters, 70-foot trees, excavating, wood-chipping, volunteers, clippers, gloves, chain saws, volunteers.
The needs go on. With this unique team of leaders, answers always come.
A national PBS news program just last weekend featured Benniston and his team and their urban prowess.
It’s a great piece. Google it.
But if you can, sit at a table with them. It’s even more impressive to see.
To read the whole story from Vindy.com, click here.