Neighborhoods

Monday, September 18, 2017

On Tuesday, September 12, Ian Beniston, YNDC Executive Director and Tiffany Sokol, YNDC Housing Director presented a session titled Getting the Work Done: Youngstown’s Model to Revitalize Vacant Homes in a Weak Market Context.

The session was engaging and well attended. It highlighted the work of YNDC, Mahoning County Land Bank, and City of Youngstown over the past two years to develop an effective and growing market rate, market ready vacant home rehabilitation model. The model was described in detail including data, partnerships, rehabilitation process, marketing, and creative use of local funding sources. 

Monday, September 18, 2017

The Raymond John Wean Foundation has awarded a $200,000 grant to REVITALIZE HOME Mortgage for community lending.

This investment will leverage community resources to provide a two-county lending model for homebuyers who are unable to access conventional banking products. Loans will be focused on homes identified and rehabilitated by Warren’s Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and YNDC. Many thanks to The Raymond John Wean Foundation. RHM and YNDC are very grateful for the support and partnership.

The OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology’s seventh annual Silly Science Sunday will take over downtown from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. 

The STEM Street Festival features hands-on exploration, demonstrations and stage shows. Exhibitors include Youngstown State University College of STEM, Austintown Home Depot, The Butler Institute of American Art, YSU Ward Beecher Planetarium, Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, Mahoning Valley Historical Society, YWCA of Youngstown, Youngstown Fire Department, Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. Produce Market, Green Youngstown and The Green Team, We Are The Solar Sisters, YSU’s Pete The Penguin mascot, Mahoning Soil & Water Conservation District and more. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Throughout the year, WKBN teams up with local organizations to make a difference in our community.

We call the effort “Caring For Our Community.” Saturday, volunteers from WKBN and Braking Point Recovery Center worked hard to build a house with Habitat for Humanity. The organization builds homes for low-income families. It’s able to help so many families throughout the Valley because it relies on volunteers, something the Youngstown area is never short of.  Saturday’s house is located on Eskine Avenue in Boardman. “All of the work that we do on the construction site is mostly done by volunteers,” said Habitat’s Kristina Nicholas. Volunteers spent the day hanging dry wall, cutting wood and finishing the porch until about 3 p.m.  If you don’t have any construction tools or skills, Habitat will supply everything you need and show you how it all works. “We supply all the hand tools. All you need to bring is some ambition and willingness to help others,” said construction manager Michael Ondrey. The family this house is for is expected to move in sometime this fall. WKBN’s crew also teamed up with volunteers from the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. They all worked to revitalize a building at the corner of Glenwood and Canfield Road, by scraping and re-painting the back of a building. To read the full story from WKBN, click here. 

Mahoning Avenue will come alive with live music, an outdoor cafe, art galleries and a farmers market with the third Mahoning Avenue Fall Fest, celebrating the neighborhood’s many hidden treasures. 

The festival is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday,between Steel Street and McKinley Avenue in the West Side’s historic Garden District. The event will feature a host of family-friendly activities, including a farmers market offering produce and baked goods, an art sale, jewelry and mini-pumpkins to paint, courtesy of the Garden District Neighborhood Association, in addition to other children’s activities. Although the new West Side Library is under construction, the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County will host a pop-up library. The new library will be named the Michael Kusalaba Branch, and the Friends of the new branch will sell keepsake bricks from the old library. Area businesses will also participate. The Sons of Italy will have a disc jockey, Kelly’s will have music as well as food and drink specials. Casa Ramirez will feature an authentic Mexican carnitas special and drink specials. There will be a music jam session in the parking lot of Huck’s Motors and the Paisley House will be have a trash-and-treasure sale. The purpose of the event is to demonstrate the vibrancy of the community and try to catalyze more permanent improvements in the future that will support and promote local artists and businesses. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

Wedneday, September 20, 2017

Year-To-Date REVITALIZATION RECAP

9,372 unique cuts by Grass Cutting Team

1,317 volunteers at 19 community workdays

3,817 cubic yards of debris removed

25,743 linear feet of sidewalks scraped

172 new clients enrolled in HUD-Approved Housing Counseling

14 completed house rehabs

1,224 students at 36 Safe Routes to School events

REVITALIZE

People who live on Canfield Road in Youngstown say a group home for the developmentally disabled is causing problems in the neighborhood. Ian Beniston is the director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.

Its headquarters is about half a block from the group home. He says the men of the home harass and scare some neighbors, including one woman with children. “Her daughter is actually afraid to go out of the house,” Beniston said. “The gentleman entered her front yard and grabbed the daughter on her arm.” “He walked up on my porch, grabbed her arm and tried to take the phone out of her hand because he wanted to call his mom,” said Lisa Weidele, the mother of the girl. “But she’s 12, and he’s almost 300 pounds.” To read the whole story from WKBN, click here.

Residents of the Mahoning and Shenango valleys who were alive in 1977 look back on Sept. 19 as a date that lives on in infamy, the day the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. announced it would all but shutter its operations in the Mahoning Valley.

It was the beginning of the prolonged and agonizing retrenchment of the domestic steel industry. We prefer to look forward. The worst is long behind us. We not only survived, we refused to admit defeat and worked our tails off. We’ve bounced back, not to where we were in 1977, but we’ve adjusted and recovered, giving us reason for optimism about the next 40 years. Especially heartening are the people who grew up here in the aftermath of Black Monday, left for greener pastures but returned and are playing leading roles in the rebirth of the Mahoning Valley. Their names appear often in the media here: R.T. and Hannah Vernal, Ian Beniston, John Slanina, Becky Keck, Dominic Marcionda, Daniel Catullo, Chris Rutushin, Heather McMahon, Danielle Seidita, Denise Bayer and Sophia Buggs, to name but a dozen. They are half of the contingent that sociologist Jill Ann Harrison, a professor at the University of Oregon, interviewed in depth for a paper she wrote, “Rust Belt Legacy: The Pull of Place in Moving Back to a Legacy City.” To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.

Leaders and volunteers with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation are busy, as evidenced by the statistics released by the organization Wednesday. 

The YNDC put out a revitalization recap going over what it and its volunteers have accomplished so far in 2017.

According to YNDC:

9,372 yards or areas of grass have been cut

1,317 volunteers have worked at 19 community workdays

3,817 cubic yards of debris have been removed

25,743 linear feet of sidewalks have been scraped

14 houses have been completely rehabilitated

1,224 students have been helped at 36 Safer Routes to School events

The YNDC is always looking for volunteers and people interested in getting involved with its mission. To read the full story from WKBN, click here.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

On Wednesday, September 20, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation received a $5,000 grant from the Robert H Reakirt  Foundation for the Glenwood Neighbors project.

This initiative will improve the quality of life, safety, public health and perception of the Glenwood Avenue corridor to foster reinvestment and economic opportunity. The work will include improvements to Glenwood Avenue: lighting, public art, vacant lot improvement, and streetscape revitalization. Many thanks to the Robert H Reakirt Foundation for their support!