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Trumbull 100 Funds Garden District Rehab Program
WARREN, Ohio – Standing before a newly renovated house, the president of Trumbull 100, Diane Sauer, announced Monday that her group would match donations to Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and Trumbull County Community Fund so revitalization efforts in this city’s Garden District can continue.
The house at 453 Vine St., paid for and renovated with a $25,000 donation from Trumbull 100 member Bill Casey, will be sold and the proceeds used to renovate other houses in the neighborhood. The house is listed at $29,900, Sauer said.
Casey is the owner of Warren Glass and Paint.
Trumbull 100 also donated $10,000 to the Community Fund, while Sauer added $5,000 on her own, which the civic group matched at the press conference.
Although the house is the first rehabilitated through the joint effort, nearby houses are also undergoing work. Those at the announcement could hear carpenters hammering nails into the new shingles on the roof nearby and the brand-new front porch built on another house.
“It's the theory that when you improve something, the houses next door will take it upon themselves to improve as well,” Sauer said of the renovation domino effect.
After about two months of work, Casey said he is glad to see the project come to fruition. He thinks it likely that Trumbull 100 will finance work on upward of 20 houses in the Garden District.
“How do you feel when you achieve goals? You feel satisfied. We're satisfied with this house, but we'll be fully satisfied when we do our 10th house, our 15th house, our 20th house and turn this area around,” Casey said. “There's a lot things going on in this district. There's a core of people who have a lot of spirit and interest. We're adding to that and trying to help get them over the hump until property values go up.”
The house, built in 1910, was structurally sound when it was purchased, Casey said, but no one had lived in it for many years. Today it has a new kitchen, deck and furnace and fresh paint. Workmen were able to save most of the original woodwork.
For Mayor Doug Franklin, saving a house from the wrecking ball is something to be proud of.
“This goes hand-in-hand with our demolition strategy. It's one thing to take these houses down, but it's just as important to have a strategy to bring some back,” he said. “It starts one house at a time, one street at a time. We're very fortunate to have partners like Trumbull 100 and Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership to help us in this effort.”
Franklin spoke to the need of cities such as Warren to have partnerships with the business community and civic-minded philanthropies to resuscitate neighborhoods that have fallen into decay. “It's critical to our future that we have these partnerships with neighborhood organizations that do cleanups and tend to gardens and do the little things off of the public dime,” the mayor stated.
From here, Casey said, it's a matter of getting the community volunteers to turn out for rehabbing other houses as it did to fix up the first house.
“If you can lead, people will follow. They're following a good example,” he said. “There's a lot things going on in this district.”
Pictured: Bill Casey, owner of Warren Glass & Paint, stands in front of the house at 453 Vine St. in Warren's Garden District. Casey and his wife donated $25,000 to buy and rehabilitate the land-bank property. Proceeds from its sale will fund additional rehab projects.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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