StreetScape Projects Earn Group 'Street Credibility'
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Youngstown CityScape group celebrates its 15th annual Streetscape project this year and Scott Schulick, chairman of the project’s committee, says Streetscape has evolved in many ways.
“We started as this organization that no one knew who we were or what we were about,” Schulick says. “We had no street credibility.”
Today, the project generates 500 volunteers annually who help on the Streetscape day that takes place the first Saturday of June.
“People see the return on their investments so they’re excited about getting involved both physically and financially,” Schulick says.
When the group first started, they recruited volunteers from local downtown businesses and got about 150 people helping out just in the project’s first year.
From there, Schulick says it’s grown exponentially, which is evident by how downtown looks today compared to the blight 15 years ago.
What is now CityScape used to be a group of people that met every few weeks, he explains, but now they have much larger operation that includes and office and an executive director, Sharon Letson.
“We’re in a much different place 15 years later,” Letson says. “There’s lots of activity downtown.”
CityScape kicked off fundraising efforts Friday for this year’s Streetscape event to take place June 2.
“Our theme this year is ‘Can You Dig It.’ We want you to come downtown and help us plant and beautify the city,” Letson says.
The group hopes to raise $20,000 to cover costs of planting materials – the mulch, the flowers, the fertilizer, upkeep – for the event. A donation request form marks different levels of campaign contributions at planting a pot ($250), funding an entire season of plant maintenance ($500), funding the planting of an entire bed ($1,000), and funding year round planting ($2,500).
“It’s evolved into this multifaceted organization that is concerned with not only beautification but preservation,” Letson says.
At the fundraising kickoff, CityScape was presented with a $35,000 check from the president of The Raymond John Wean Foundation, Jeff Glebocki, and a quilt made of T-shirts from past Streetscape events from the Johnny Appleseed Garden Club that maintains the John Young Memorial garden bed.
The Wean Foundation support is for a special project in Wick Park, $20,000, and CityScape operations, $15,000.
“A couple years ago, Streetscape began working with the Wick Park Neighborhood Association and Defend Youngstown in a movement to rehabilitate and renovate Wick Park,” Schulick says. “While we wait for the major overhaul of the park to happen, we’ve been doing small phases of that project.”
One phase, which the Wean Foundation money will go toward, is gates at the entrance and exit of the driveway that dissects the park in an attempt to keep the park safer and cleaner.
CityScape and Streetscape are reciprocal in many ways with the local neighborhood organizations and advocacy groups; some of the groups were even started as a result of CityScape.
“They’re partners as well, they send their volunteers out to our event and we send our volunteers out to their events,” Schulick says. “There’s a spirit of camaraderie in terms of making the city look better.”
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.