Neighborhoods

The new Glenwood Business Center in Youngstown will be at more than 50% occupancy by the end of the month, Anthony Trevena told members of the Western Reserve Port Authority’s board of directors at its monthly meeting Wednesday.

Inspiring Minds will be an anchor tenant of the South Side building, Trevena reported. Trevena is director of the Northeast Ohio Development and Finance Authority, the port authority’s economic development division.  The Glenwood Avenue project was among several that Trevena updated for board members during the meeting, which began with a moment of silence in memory of former board member Don Hanni III, who died Tuesday. The port authority acquired the 2246 Glenwood Ave. building in May with plans to sell it to Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. within 18 months. YNDC ended up purchasing the structure in August.  An Oct. 31 event is scheduled to showcase the property with local officials and representatives of Wells Fargo Foundation, which in June awarded the city and YNDC a $150,000 grant to support renovation of the building. Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley previously used the building as its distribution center. Other potential tenants YNDC is working with include a food processing company and a tenant for part of the property’s warehouse space, Trevena said. The building has about 20,000 square feet of space. The port authority, using a $50,000 community development block grant provided by the city, also will offer microenterprise counseling services, he said. “So you’re not just putting enterprises into the building. This is to help them become successful and teach them fiscal competency,” he remarked. Ian Beniston, YNDC’s executive director, is even more optimistic than Trevena about the building. By Oct. 31, when an event with city officials and Wells Fargo is planned, he said he expects a “super majority” of the available space to be leased. Beniston also doesn’t expect this to be the last such project YNDC undertakes in the city, he said Wednesday afternoon. “One of the reasons we undertook this is because we saw a need for move-in ready commercial space, not just along Glenwood but neighborhoods in Youngstown in general outside of downtown,” he said. To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here. 

The Youngstown Playhouse has added lights to its parking lot and also installed decorative lights that bath the building facade in color.

The project, which cost approximately $10,000, is the first in its renovation and beautification campaign. The theater parking lot is now fully lighted for the first time in many years, said James McClellan, operations manager of the facility. The entire perimeter and center of the lot, which provides free parking, is now brightly lit, increasing the safety of patrons and also calling attention to the theater’s presence on Glenwood Avenue. The towering facade of the building has become a focal point, as it is now bathed in light that changes color, giving the 59-year-old building a night time glow. Additional work that has already been completed include new flower beds, trimming of the brush along the perimeter of the parking lot and removal of a broken-down fence around the lot. The next round of improvements will include roof repairs; repair and replacement work on the building’s exterior stucco, mortar and cinder block; painting the facade; and upgrading the awning and gutters. The roof work will begin next month, said McClellan. Further and as-yet unspecified improvements to the interior of the theater will come at a later time. Aey Electric installed the lighting, under the supervision of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. Funding is coming from the Playhouse’s capital campaign, which was launched earlier this year. So far, $83,500 has been raised toward the goal of $228,000, according to McClellan. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

ICU Blockwatch and St. Dominic Church will host a Neighborhood Harvest from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday in the gated lot at the corner of Cottage Grove and Auburndale Avenue.

There will be food, candy, a bounce house and DJ Ira Cross. Children under age 18 must be accompanied by an adult. There also will be local police and fire departments in attendance. No costumes.

For information, call Victoria Allen at 330-360-8460. The event is sponsored by Conroy’s Party Shop, Southside Recycling and Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and is free to attend. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

On Saturday, October 20, seventeen volunteers participated in the Idora Neighborhood Workday and helped clean up and demo the basement of 1720 Glenwood Avenue.

Volunteers from Tabernacle Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Valley Christian School, and the YSU Honors College cleaned up and removed 30 cubic yards of debris from the basement and helped prepare the property for rehabilitation. We’d like to thank all the volunteers for their hard work!

Youngstown State University’s student chapter of the American Chemical Society is celebrating its 70th anniversary and National Chemistry Week with the theme “Chemistry is Out of This World.”

The ACS is a nonprofit organization and the world’s largest scientific society with over 158,000 members at all degree levels and fields of chemistry. “The general topic for National Chemistry Week this year is outer space, and each year a different theme is designated at the national level by the ACS,” Saidah Yusuf, a junior biology major said. “Last year’s theme was ‘Chemistry Rocks,’ which focused on geochemistry.” Yusuf has been a member of YSU’s ACS since she was a freshman and is the historian for the organization this year. She takes pride in educating the community about chemistry with the group. “Chemistry is important because it is everywhere and is branched out in all aspects of life,” she said. “Chemistry is involved in food, exercise, outer space — just name it, and there is chemistry involved.” Yusuf takes pride in reaching out to the community with the hands-on experiments YSU’s ACS hosts at different schools in the Youngstown area. She said the demonstrations are a great way to show children how important chemistry is to everyday life. Michael Serra, the adviser of YSU’s ACS for the past six years, said he is proud of the way students in the organization, like Yusuf, promote chemistry on campus and in the community. “The YSU ACS is an active organization that does multiple chemistry shows and presentations throughout the year,” Serra said. “[The ACS] has volunteered for Silly Science Sunday, since it first started and hosts demonstrations at the Canfield Fair that draw sizable crowds.” Along with the presentations and experiments, the organization also volunteers at Penguin Preview Day, the Rescue Mission and the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. To read the full story from The Jambar, click here. 

An eviction hearing tied to a land-contract dispute was canceled Tuesday for a client of Community Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm that sued Vision Property Management of South Carolina last week.

The hearing is rescheduled for today, when a ruling will be made on a temporary restraining order Community Legal Aid is seeking against Vision Property, which it hopes will temporarily halt the company’s ability to evict tenants until the lawsuit concludes. To read the ful story from The Vindicator, click here.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The YNDC Grass Cutting and Clean Up Team Members and AmeriCorps REVITALIZE Team Members worked this week to plant 20 trees in various locations along the Greater Glenwood Avenue Corridor.

Trees were planted at the YNDC offices at 820 Canfield Road and in vacant lots at 970 Lanterman Avenue, 624 and 1111 Glenwood Avenue, and 935 Parkview Avenue. The tree planting is part of the ongoing Glenwood Neighbors/Corridor Improvement Corps Initiative.  

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Cameron
and Elizabeth moved into 1936 Wakefield Avenue in August 2017 and have since
settled into the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood and made a number of improvements
to their new home.

YNDC worked to revitalize the property last spring and
summer, completing the work in July 2017. This is Cameron and Elizabeth’s first
homebuying experience. They built a fence in the backyard for their new dog, a
pug named Dita, and painted a number of interior rooms. “It was really great
buying a house from YNDC that was move-in ready,” said Cameron, “that way any
improvements we make can be for things we want instead of things we need.”
Their sense of style is inspired by Elizabeth’s tendency to collect items.
“I’ve collected items that appear in this house since I was about 16 years
old,” she said. Their favorite thing about the Brownlee Woods Neighborhood is
its proximity to their workplaces and the freeway. We’d like to thank Cameron
and Elizabeth for sitting down with us again and inviting us into their home!

The law firm Brouse McDowell, which is representing Vision Property Management in a lawsuit filed by non-profit law firm Community Legal Aid, filed a “notice of removal” Wednesday afternoon, asking for the case to be moved to federal court.

The lawsuit is eligible for adjudication in federal court because it includes RICO accusations, which would be a federal crime. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Officials from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Wells Fargo will join Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and YNDC on Wednesday, October 31 to highlight the First Place Small City 2018 Community WIins Award and Grant of $150,000 for Revitalize Youngstown. 

The event will begin at 10:00 a.m. at 2245 Glenwood Avenue in Youngstown.

According to a press release, the award program honors the best neighborhood stabilization efforts in the county and YNDC's work was selected as the best in the country in the small city category.

The press release said that the award was accepted by Mayor Jamael Tito Brown at the United States Conference of Mayors 86th Annual Meeting in Boston in June 2018.

The award funds were used for the purchase and renovation of 2246 Glenwood Ave as the Glenwood Business Center, which will be occupied by community organizations and businesses. To read the full story from WFMJ, click here.