SitemapThe power of persistence and partnerships paid off prodigiously for Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley this week.
On Tuesday, Elaine L. Chao, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, formally announced in Washington that a consortium of Valley institutions will be awarded a $10.85 million infrastructure improvement grant from the Better Utiliizing Investments to Leverage Development [BUILD] program.
The significance of that award cannot be overstated. The Youngstown proposal stands out as the one and only urban BUILD application among many from Ohio that received funding in the program this year. It also stands out as among only 91 projects to get the green light out of 851 applicants seeking $10.9 billion nationwide.
The top-tier quality of the Youngstown proposal drew special attention from Chao and other U.S. DOT brass as the only federal BUILD grant recipient to receive a special invite to attend Tuesday’s official announcement ceremony. Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown was among the honored attendees.
From our perspective, however, we’ve known for several years now that the project proposal stood out with singular supremacy. Essentially the same project had sought DOT funding each year since 2016 but missed the cut by a hair each time. This year’s proposal, with some added tinkering, clearly stood out as having all the right stuff.
First, elements of the city’s SMART2 [Strategic & Sustainable, Medical & Manufacturing, Academic & Arts, Residential & Recreational, Technology & Training] proposal fully meet the principal criteria for BUILD funding. The major elements of SMART2 focus squarely on road and public transportation improvements. The total $26.2 million project to renovate and modernize downtown Youngstown and the Fifth Avenue corridor does just that.
The grant proposal calls for putting Fifth Avenue on a so-called “road diet,’ reducing it from six lanes to a divided boulevard with a landscaped median and one traffic lane on each side.
Other major structural and aesthetic enhancements are planned for major downtown streets including Federal, Commerce, Phelps and Front.
New to this year’s grant is a component that strengthens the all-important public-transportation dimension. It calls for activating autonomous driverless shuttle vehicles to connect the Mercy Health medical campus, Youngstown State University, the downtown central business district and the new chill-can plant and research campus operated by Joseph Co. International on the city’s East Side.
In those and other respects, the proposal meets and beats the areas under evaluation. They include safety, economic competitiveness, quality of life, environmental protection, energy independence, innovation and community partnerships. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.