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Fresh Paint Gives City Neighborhoods Bright Look
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The buildings along Glenwood Avenue on the South Side used to be almost monotone, mostly beige with an occasional blue or gray structure interrupting here and there. Empty lots and vacant buildings were commonplace.
The corridor is one of the main roads in and out of Youngstown. Upward of 11,000 cars travel Glenwood daily. For those who travel through the Idora Park neighborhood, the road used to be a tour through just how far the city had fallen.
Slowly, though, things began to improve. Residents stepped up to clean up their neighborhoods. In 2009, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. began its efforts to rebuild the Glenwood corridor.
Perhaps the most striking change, even to those whose minds are more on their morning commute than the buildings they pass, are the three murals interspersed along the southern section of Glenwood Avenue, all funded by the YNDC.
The first, on a wall at the corner of Glenwood and Winona Drive, was painted by residents of the Idora Park neighborhood. The other two -- one outside the Youngstown Playhouse, one on the north wall of the former Park Inn -- were painted by professionals based on suggestions from the community.
“On Glenwood Avenue, we've been focused on demolishing blighted commercial buildings, blighted residential buildings, cleaning up vacant land and trying to bring back the basic quality of life,” says the YNDC executive director, Ian Beniston. “We also wanted to breathe some life, some new vitality, into the corridor. One of the ways to get that done is through public art.”
Now, those beige — and occasionally blue — buildings are bringing color back to the Idora neighborhood, making the corridor thousands travel every day a bit brighter.
“It projects a positive image. Most of the images we put up are positive, Beniston elaborates. “They feature people from the neighborhood and it demonstrates what's happening with the long process of making positive change that will eventually revitalize this part of the city.”
Similar projects are underway in Warren as well, the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership leading the way. Members of the community are voting on the design for the group's next mural where the Mahoningside Power Plant stood.
Getting the city to go along with plans for the first mural his group put up wasn't easy, says executive director Matt Martin.
“The city at first had some misgivings about us doing murals, but then a site got tagged [with graffiti]. That helped us convince everybody and it helped us take that space back,” he says. “I think they were a little skeptical at first about the idea of public art being popular with the residents. But they've come around since then. The fact that we open it up to a public voting process really speaks to the city and administration.”
For both organizations, local artists have played a key role in taking the murals from the page to the wall.
The YNDC chose a Boardman native, Tommy Morgan, to paint the southern wall of the Park Inn building.
Trumbull Neighborhood’s Martin estimates that most of the submissions for the partnership's next mural came from within 50 miles of Warren.
“I was adamant about representing the steel industry,” Morgan says. “I grew up here. That's why my family left: the steel industry died and we had to move. [So] this is kind of an homage to them with the steel faces looking into the future. It's based on the steel foundation.”
Morgan's design features two steelmakers’ faces on both sides of the Park Inn that look toward each other, the space in between filled with symbols of Youngstown’s future.
“The future of the city is seen in the wind turbines. There's organic growth, I've got satellites, tech, 3-D printing. I have everything about the future represented,” he adds.
There's no question that the murals have been well-received by the community, but some building owners are still hesitant to have murals done on their property, Beniston and Martin say.
“Sometimes business owners are skeptical, even if the property is vacant, about if it's even legal to paint a mural, if the city's going to give them a hard time about it or even if it might affect the property value,” Martin comments. “Not everybody around here is sold on this type of public art, but that's why we're doing it.”
Neither claims that murals alone will restore neighborhoods to what they were in their heyday, but both Martin and Beniston agree it's a starting point.
“This is something that's visually tangible. It might be the only road [people] take when they're going downtown and it's a sign of the change, not only on Glenwood, but of the change taking place throughout the neighborhood,” Beniston explains.
Morgan adds that painting murals sets a tone for the Warren neighborhood and what the people expect from their community.
“I've seen how it works. It's a proven formula. Even if you look at Greenwich Village or SoHo [in New York City] or South Beach in Miami, you can see how it's changed communities. It works and the overhead is low,” he explains. “You put up some art and next thing you know, you've got cafes and galleries and it can turn the whole area around.”
Martin says the organization spends very little on the murals, making them one of the most efficient ways the group can beautify the community.
“Most people will agree, I think, making something look better makes you feel good about your neighborhood. I really think it's part of our overall mission,” he says. “In terms of dollars, it's not a huge portion of what we do, but in terms of the impact, it's hugely important.”
One concern residents voiced when the YNDC and Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership began painting the murals was that graffiti would cover the artists’ efforts.
So far, those worries have been unfounded, but measures have been taken to prevent a worst-case scenario. While the YNDC applies a final clear coat on all of its murals that allow graffiti to be washed off, the partnership uses a much simpler method.
“It's going to happen eventually over time, but what we've tried to do in the past is keep extra paint, and if someone were to tag it, we'd just cover it up quickly,” Martin says. “It just hasn't been an issue so far.”
When David Grohl Alley was defaced in April, Martin says it became a rallying point for the city's art community. Since then, that feeling has gone beyond the backstreet in downtown Warren and expanded to public art as a whole.
“You had people out there within days saving the alley, covering up the tagging. There was kind of a rally around public art after that event. It's important to not back down after stuff like that. You can really destroy public art easily, but we can't stop doing it because of that,” he explains.
In addition to Morgan's mural in progress, YNDC is planning a mural across the street on the LaFrance Cleaners building and recently helped Soul Food Sensations find funding to repaint its exterior.
The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership isn't planning any murals beyond Mahoningside, but Martin says his group plans to do more.
“We just want to keep going,” he says. “Everywhere there's a space or a wall or a canvas, we want to see public art. Beautifying our neighborhood is a big job and it takes a lot of effort.”
With three murals complete, Beniston knows the impact they can have on the neighborhood.
“It's projecting people from the neighborhood doing positive things. Naturally, that improves the psyche,” Beniston says. ”It adds to the perception that things are changing, which they truly are, not only within the neighborhood, but also to people that drive through it.”
Pictured: Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngsstown Neighborhood Development Corp., stands in front of a wall where the drawing he holds is the basis for a new mural on Glenwood Avenue.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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