Neighborhoods

Friday, August 25, 2017

Cameron and Elizabeth Crosby moved into their new home at 1936 Wakefield Avenue in the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood in August.

The updated 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home includes a formal dining room, eat-in kitchen, and a spacious living room. Cameron and Elizabeth sat down with us to talk about their homebuying experience and moving to Youngstown. “We found out about YNDC from Cameron’s grandma,” said Elizabeth. “We looked at about 25 or 30 houses but we loved the size of this house, the price, and the fact that it was completely redone.” The house is located close to work for both Cameron and Elizabeth and they are very happy with the neighborhood. “Brownlee Woods is a really cute, tight-knit community,” says Elizabeth. “We’re super thankful that we found out about YNDC,” says Cameron. Congratulations, Cameron and Elizabeth!

Those who drive in and through central Youngstown during the
next few weeks should notice the new public art projects workers are installing
in and near the downtown.

This art, funded by a $100,000 grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts, is the latest chapter in the recent growth of
public art within the city.

Youngstown was the recipient of one of the largest awards of
the 64 cities and towns that received an NEA Our Town grant in 2016. The
$100,000 grant is the largest the city has received from the NEA.

The “Mahoning Avenue Archway” project will also light up at
night, says artist David Tamulonis. He and his team will light an abandoned
railway arch above Mahoning Avenue. “The top lights are going to wash down on
the sides of the wall,” Tamulonis says. “And there’s an LED strip that goes
around the arch on the outside of both sides, going downtown and to the West
Side.”

The lights will highlight what he calls a forgotten
structure, and their orange glow will aim to duplicate the colors of an old
steel furnace. The Mahoning County Building Department’s review of the project
begins Sept. 8 and could run four weeks. The fixtures are scheduled to arrive
the third week of September.

Project member Ian Beniston, executive director of the
Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., sees the archway project as the
perfect example of place-making, a term borrowed from the vocabulary of urban
planning. “That’s why this concept attracted me,” Beniston says.

“For me, it just means making somewhere unique or special,”
he says of the term. “In a lot of cases in Youngstown, these are things that
are already there, but people might not see it that way. Part of what we’re
doing is calling attention to something that’s already there – highlighting
it.” To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here. 

Monday, August 28, 2017

YNDC has sold three revitalized homes in the month of August!

15 Vermont Avenue in the Handel’s Neighborhood closed on August 4 for $55,500. 1936 Wakefield Avenue in Brownlee Woods closed on August 9 for $57,000. Finally, 3475 Susan Circle in Cornersburg closed on August 28 for $75,000. Congratulations to all the new homeowners!

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Three more volunteers earned BLIGHT FIGHTER VIP T-shirts in the month of August!

Justin Mondok of the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments and YSU students Daniel Bancroft and Joseph Agati all have participated in six workdays so far in 2017. We’d like to thank these volunteers for the time they have dedicated to fighting blight in Youngstown! REVITALIZE.

Tuesday,
August 29, 2017

On Tuesday,
August 29, city leaders and residents gathered at Taft Elementary to
commemorate the completion of sidewalk improvements with a ribbon-cutting
ceremony.

Several sidewalks directly adjacent to the elementary school were
replaced in order to make it safer for neighborhood students that walk to
school. The construction was made possible by the Safe Routes to School
program, a collaboration between the Youngstown Neighborhood Development
Corporation, the Youngstown City School District, the City of Youngstown, the
Western Reserve Health Foundation, the Community Foundation of the Mahoning
Valley, and the William Swanston Charitable Fund.

Tuesday,
August 29, 2017

On Tuesday,
August 29, twenty-nine Neighborhood Champion Award nominees were recognized in
a ceremony held at the Wick Park Pavilion on the city’s North Side.

The
nominees were as follows:

Mohammed
Azam

Peggy Bosela

Mason
Carratt

Mary Danus

Joyce
Davidson

Marguerite
Douglas

Tom Forestal

Rick Giles

Peggy
Griffith

Kyle Johnson

Eric Jones

Gary Koerth

Keland Logan

Nancy and
Russell Martin

Rita
McKinley

Shalene
McRae

Gennarro Mitchell

Jerry O'Hara

Father Kevin
Peters

Tom Pipoly

Maggie Pentz

Thomas and
Elnora Sipp

John B.
Slanina

Dorothy
Smith

Southside
Recycling

St. Patrick’s
Church

Claudia
Sturtz

John Swierz

Raul &
Victoria Valentine

From the 29
nominees, five winners were chosen and awarded with $1,000 for a neighborhood
improvement project of their choice. Winners chosen by the selection committee
were Peggy Bosela, Joyce Davidson, Marguerite Douglas, Keland Logan, and Thomas
and Elnora Sipp. All the nominees and their projects will be highlighted on
YNDC social media in the coming weeks. We would like to thank all the nominees
for their dedication to improving Youngstown’s neighborhoods!

A collaboration of organizations ranging
from some of the Mahoning Valley’s major players in economic development to
agencies not normally associated with economic development is coordinating on
creating a resource pipeline for entrepreneurs.

The newly formed organization,
Mahoning Valley is for Entrepreneurs, steers entrepreneurs to resources they
may need depending on the stage of their companies, said Sara Wenger, economic
development program manager at Eastgate Regional Council of Governments. A
guide that the initiative assembled defines the support participating entities
can provide entrepreneurs at the idea, startup, emerging or mature stages of
their ventures, including capital, financial analysis, growth and business
planning and research and development. The organization will host a business
startup workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 5 at the Raymond John Wean Foundation
in Warren. Mahoning Valley businesses accounted for $35.8 billion in sales in
2015, according to the organization’s charter. However, the need to encourage
more startups and help early-stage companies is highlighted by statistics that
reflect the decline over 10 years in the number of businesses operating in the
Valley. In 2015, the number of businesses in Mahoning and Trumbull counties was
9,532, down from 10,067 in 2010. The need for such an initiative, an outgrowth
of Eastgate’s most recent comprehensive economic development strategy, became
apparent about 18 months ago, Wenger said. Staff at Youngstown Neighborhood
Development Corp., which had offered its first round of business classes,
noticed that students in the courses – many of whom had plans in the idea stage
or not much further along — were having difficulty finding where to go next. The
Mahoning Valley has “a great entrepreneurship ecosystem” but its resources
aren’t always as well connected as they should be, said Liberty Avila, YNDC
land reuse director. Entrepreneurs in the very early stages often were “bounced
around” to various organizations and didn’t know what each did, Avila said.
Most are geared toward existing businesses or entrepreneurs with plans closer
to the startup stage. “Some organizations are not set up to help with business
plans at all,” she said. The problem extended beyond clients not knowing the
resources available or the role of each agency, said Crystal Volinchak,
administrative assistant at the Ohio Small Business Development Center at
Youngstown State University. In some cases, the agencies themselves were
unaware of what the others did or what their specialties are. Read the full story from the Business Journal here.

United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning
Valley will host its annual Day of Caring Friday at sites across the city.

The
breakfast begins at the Covelli Centre at 8 a.m. and volunteers will head to
their work sites at 9 a.m. This year’s major project will be on Oak Street
between Albert Street and Lansdowne Boulevard on the city’s east side, as
workers clean sidewalks and vacant lots. “Helping to clean up and beautify Oak
Street, our major East Side corridor, will dovetail greatly with the Joseph
Family’s Chill Can project,” said Mayor John McNally, “as well as improvement
work being done by the North East Home Owners Association, East High School
volunteers and by church groups in this area. Volunteers will also work with 18
nonprofit agencies, including Potential Development, YWCA of Youngstown and
Youngstown CityScape, on landscaping, remodeling and cleanup projects. The
American Red Cross will also be distributing free smoke alarms. United Way
President Bob Hannon said the organization is expecting more than 800
volunteers, a record number. To read the full story from the Business Journal, click here.

To watch the video from The Business Journal, click here. 

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Public and private officials gathered
Tuesday morning near Taft Elementary School to celebrate the completion of federally
funded infrastructure improvements.

The improvements, funded through the Safe
Routes to School program, is one of a series planned for neighborhoods near
elementary schools within the city over the next few years, said Tom Hetrick,
planner with Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. YNDC, the city of
Youngstown and the Youngstown City School District are partners in the project.
In 2015, Youngstown was awarded $200,000 toward funding $250,000 in
infrastructure improvements, among them replacing broken sidewalk squares,
installing new sidewalks and new signage, said Ian Beniston, executive director
of Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. The goal is to make it safer for
children to walk, ride their bicycles and otherwise get to school by other than
a car or bus, he said. YNDC, working with Youngstown and the school district,
wrote the grant application that secured the funding for the improvements. The
program has been in place since 2005, said Christine Surma, Safe Routes to
School program coordinator who worked with the Ohio Department of Development.
To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.