Neighborhoods

Beyond Expectations Barber College is growing into cosmetology. Business and community leaders cut the ribbon Tuesday morning at Beyond Expectations Beauty College, located in the rear of 2246 Glenwood Ave., the same building where the Beyond Expectations Barber College opened in 2022. “With the success we’ve had with the barber college, graduating over 200 people – we boast a 91% graduation, 90% licensure rate and a 100% placement rate – we wanted to just continue that into the beauty industry, the cosmetology industry,” said founder Eric Garrett Sr. He owns the colleges with his business partner, Daniel Williams. Garrett’s children, Eric Garrett II and Eryca Garrett, are the co-directors. “We wanted to make an impact,” Garrett said. “So far we’ve done a positive thing in the barbering industry. Traditionally, barber is synonymous with men, but now with the cosmetology piece, we felt like we wanted to expand.”

Tuesday’s grand opening drew community leaders, including Mayor Jamael Tito Brown who urged residents to take advantage of the new school. “This is an opportunity for our young men and women now for a career,” Brown said. “This is not just a job. This is a career for them.” Applications for the beauty college are available at the barber college.

Christin Cylar is the cosmetology and manicure programs instructor. The program requires 1,500 hours for the cosmetology program, 200 hours for the manicure program and an additional 100 hours for the advanced manicure program, she said. Beyond Expectations Barber College, which was founded in 2013 in Akron, teaches its students about more than hair. Courses cover the basics of owning a business, financial literacy and the importance of mental and physical health. “Part of the American dream is just that,” Garrett said. “As a disabled veteran myself, I love this amazing country. Giving other people the idea or the thought process or the skill to be able to own their own business is part of the American dream. That’s part of what we incorporate in our curriculum.”

Beyond Expectations partners with Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, Choffin Career & Technical Center, Mahoning and Columbiana Training Association and the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation.

To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here. 

Business and community leaders cut the ribbon Tuesday morning at Beyond Expectations Beauty College, located in the rear of 2246 Glenwood Ave., the same building where Beyond Expectations Barber College opened in 2022.

The Barber College, which was founded in 2013 in Akron, teaches its students about more than hair. Courses cover the basics of owning a business, financial literacy and the importance of mental and physical health.

“Although we’re opening during our grand opening today, that’s primarily for the students,” says Eric Garrett Sr., founder of both Beyond Expectations Barber College and Beauty College. “To open up to the actual public, that won’t happen until later during the summer.”

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

Wednesday, February 21, 2024. 

On Wednesday, February 21, Farmers National Bank awarded YNDC with a $7,500 grant to support YNDC’s housing programs. Thank you to Farmers National Bank for their ongoing support! 

Monday, February 26, 2024. 

On February 15, 2024, the Mahoning County Commissioners approved an agreement between YNDC and the Mahoning County Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Department to provide $800,000 in Lead Safe Ohio funding to YNDC. The funding will be used to make lead safe improvements to housing units in the City of Youngstown.

Huge thanks to the Mahoning County Commissioners and Mahoning County Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Department!

As the prices for almost everything go up, the average American’s confidence in successfully owning a home one day is decreasing. “If anyone is in the market for buying a house, you’ll realize how difficult it is and how expensive it is. Home prices and mortgage rates have both gone up. For anyone to be able to afford a house in Ohio, it’s really difficult,” said Ohio Treasurer of State Robert Sprague. FINDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING Access to affordable housing means the price of renting your space takes up around 30% of your income each year. That means not all of your paycheck goes to housing; there’s 70% left over for utilities, health bills, food, gas, leisure, savings, and everything in between. 

Alex Viglio is a housing counselor with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.

To read the full story from Mahoning Matters, click here. 

Grace Persing is a Neighborhood Organizer for the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. Grace assists YNDC’s Neighborhood Stabilization Director to mobilize residents and stakeholders to take collective action to improve citywide housing quality and neighborhood conditions and help to develop and support neighborhood leaders.

Grace can be reached at gpersing@yndc.org.

In Cleveland’s Central neighborhood, traffic whizzes by on Central Avenue, a street dotted with businesses. If you glance down any of the side streets, you’ll see rows of homes. One thing that’s hard to find, however - trees. Cleveland-native Samira Malone grew up in this neighborhood. She has many fond memories, but she says even as a young girl, she knew there was something missing. “One of the things that always just alarmed me was the fact that there were it was so gray, everything was so gray and brown and built out and very little refuge for, being connected to the environment and Earth.” Malone calls herself a professional tree hugger. She’s director of the Cleveland Tree Coalition, a collaborative urban forestry organization that partners with the city. Through the coalition, Malone works to find ways to reestablish the Forest City’s connection to its roots.

Trees can reduce risk of asthma and cardiovascular disease, and can improve mental health, Malone said. Tree canopy can also cool down communities, driving down utility costs at home. An ideal, healthy baseline for canopy is about 30%, she said, but Cleveland’s numbers are closer to 18%. “If you look at any redlining map, historical policy and practice -- especially disinvestment in Black and brown communities -- is a direct correlation to why there is a disproportionately low tree canopy in Black and brown neighborhoods, primarily concentrated on the east side of Cleveland,” Malone said. The city is currently planting between 3,000 and 5,000 trees each year, Malone said, but meeting the city’s 30% goal will take 28,000 trees and upwards of $100 million.

In Northeast Ohio, a region where growth was driven by its once-booming industrial sector, canopy loss is commonplace. In places like Youngstown, residents know the feeling of lacking trees all too well. Jack Daugherty is the neighborhood stabilization director for the Mahoning Valley TreeCorps. “Our city is struggling to keep after that problem because it's such a big one,” he said. “There are thousands of trees, mature tree lawn trees that are dead or dying and are falling, and that's created a big frustration for folks in their neighborhoods.”

To read the full story from IdeaStream Public Media, click here. 

City council will consider legislation Wednesday to permit the board of control to hire contractors for up to $1 million, from Youngstown’s American Rescue Plan funds, to demolish about 75 to 100 vacant houses. Council also will vote at its Wednesday meeting to allow the board to enter into a contract for up to $100,000 for asbestos testing on about 100 vacant structures.

The two proposals come from the $3 million city council set aside in ARP money to address issues with the worst vacant houses in Youngstown. After the two allocations, the fund will have about $500,000 left in it, said Michael Durkin, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent. “By the end of this year, we’ll be pretty much at the end of the line with demos,” Durkin said. “After this, we’d have at the most, 50 houses that need to come down. It will grow a little. There will always be some, but it’s more manageable.”

More than 2,600 vacant houses have been demolished in Youngstown since 2017, according to statistics provided by Durkin. There were 621 taken down in 2017, 646 in 2018 and 513 in 2019. But it has slowed down since then, with under 250 annually between 2020 and 2022, and increasing to 264 last year, he said. City council approved using $8 million of the city’s $82.8 million ARP award on Dec. 15, 2021, for the abatement and demolition of properties throughout Youngstown.

The city kept the money set aside and didn’t do demolitions with the ARP money as it awaited word on an application for a grant through the Ohio Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Program. The Mahoning County Land Bank on Dec. 6, 2022, was awarded $6.9 million for demolition work, including $5.3 million to take down about 500 vacant houses in Youngstown. Of the 264 houses demolished last year in Youngstown, 176 came from city ARP funds, 27 were done by private property owners at their personal expense and 61 from the land bank, Durkin said.

The land bank will do more than 350 demolitions in the city this year and will finish the rest in 2025, Durkin said. The remaining $500,000 in the ARP demolition fund will either go toward more demolitions or could be reallocated by city council for other projects, Durkin said. The city has to allocate all of its ARP money by Dec. 31.

To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 
 

Lola Lewis is the Arborist and Training Manager for the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. Lola provides overall guidance and manages all training activities as part of Mahoning Valley TreeCorps, a large-scale urban tree canopy restoration, management, and workforce training program in the cities of Youngstown and Warren, Ohio that involves multiple staff, organizational partners and volunteers.

More than $22 million in federal funds will be coming to Mahoning and Trumbull counties — as part of an agreement between the U.S. House and Senate — including $6.16 million for the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport’s primary runway and $4.2 million for a waterline in Lordstown. The package, which had more than 6,500 earmarks totaling $12.7 billion, includes several big-ticket items for Mahoning and Trumbull counties. At the top of the list is $6.16 million for the airport in Vienna, through the Western Reserve Port Authority, which operates it, to resurface the airport’s main runway. That money would go with a $5 million federal earmark WRPA received for that work in 2022. Anthony Trevena, WRPA’s executive director, said he didn’t want to comment on the money until after the Senate vote. The Youngstown Air Reserve Station, which is adjacent to the airport, is receiving $2.5 million from this package for planning and design work for a new fire station. The station itself is estimated to cost $25 million.

The earmarks for the Mahoning Valley were sponsored by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, along with U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Bainbridge, and Bill Johnson, a Republican who resigned from the U.S. House in January to become Youngstown State University president.

The village of Lordstown would get $4.2 million to make improvements to its water distribution system by replacing the Pritchard Ohltown Road water station and installing a redundant 24-inch waterline from Meander Reservoir. The line would provide water — as well as a backup in case the existing line goes down — primarily for the Ultium Cells battery plant and other parts of the village. The village, through Brown and Joyce, had sought $14 million for the project. “The funding we received is outstanding,” Lordstown Mayor Jackie Woodward said. “It’s a great start. It’s definitely going to help lift this project off the ground and hopefully we can see the project start soon. I’m very pleased with the funding. Of course, it falls short of the full amount, but at least we can get started.”

Christopher Peterson, president of the village’s board of public affairs, said, “We’re very happy we’re getting the $4.2 million. We’ll take what we can get. We really appreciate any of the funding agencies giving us money for this.” The village applied for a $3 million grant from the Ohio Department of Development and is seeking $6.1 million from the state’s capital budget, Peterson said. The projects at the airport, YARS and Lordstown were the three funded in Trumbull County at a total of $12.86 million.

MAHONING COUNTY

Eight projects in Mahoning County would receive a total of $9,807,652 from Congress. That includes $2.5 million each for Flying HIGH Inc., a Youngstown-based nonprofit, to help with infrastructure needed for housing development in the county, and for the Mahoning Valley Community School in Youngstown for a community learning center on the city’s South Side. The school received a $1 million state grant in January.

The school purchased the former Job and Family Services building at 2026 South Ave. to turn it into a community learning center with plans to include a gymnasium, cafeteria, additional workforce development classrooms, a wellness center, a media center and a childcare facility.

Youngstown received $1,284,652 for an interceptor sewer replacement and combined sewer overflow elimination project, $1.2 million to replace waterlines with lead in them and $400,000 for a transportation study for the East Side with a focus on looking at ways to connect it to an Interstate 80 interchange at state Route 304.

Also, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. would get $1,020,000 for its ongoing effort to renovate the former Foster Theater on the city’s South Side into housing and businesses.

To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.