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Vibrant NEO Plan Takes Shape, Seeks Consensus
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Should trends continue on the paths they’re heading, 25 years hence communities all across northeastern Ohio can expect a higher inventory of abandoned properties, increased costs for services, stagnant job opportunities and modest population growth.
"Nobody wins doing business as usual," Hunter Morrison, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, said following a presentation to the city planning and zoning commission Wednesday.
Morrison delivered an update on the Vibrant NEO 2040 Regional Vision, an effort his organization has crafted using input and data from the 12-county region that makes up northeastern Ohio.
The objective of the report is to provide recommendations intended to help build this part of the country into a competitive, economically sustainable region, Morrison noted.
"Our goal right now is to come to a consensus," he said. Over the next several weeks Morrison intends to make similar presentations before community and municipal leaders throughout the region and obtain feedback and comments.
"We'll have meetings like we had today,” he said, “get comment, and then finalize the work over the next month.”
By February, NEOSCC should have in place a final framework that incorporates three overarching themes with recommendations, Morrison said. He emphasizes, however, that the Regional Vision effort is just a framework from which local communities can construct viable, long-term plans.
Among the major themes in the study is promoting investment in the region's established communities, improving transportation and connectivity between counties across northeastern Ohio, and employing efforts to preserve the natural resources in the region.
"We share common challenges," Morrison said. "Our region hasn't been growing in terms of population and jobs compared to the rest of the country in the last 20 years," Morrison said. "Yet we continue to expand our footprint."
For example, more money is being spent on extending infrastructure outside the cities while redevelopment within the city, where infrastructure exists, is ignored. "We add more sewer and waterlines and roadways at the edges,” Morrison declared, “and we see abandonment, not just in the Valley, but throughout the region."
Taking into consideration this shift and the pace of development over the next quarter century, the number of abandoned houses could number as many as 175,000 in northeastern Ohio, Morrison said. Ridding this blight would require demolishing 18 houses per day, every day, over the next 25 years.
"That's about a billion and-a-half dollars that somebody has to come up with," Morrison estimates. At the same time, counties are also likely to feel the pinch of increasing costs for subsidizing development in the suburbs. "It has serious consequences to the budgets of our communities," Morrison said.
Investing more dollars where infrastructure exists makes more sense, Morrison said, and rebuilding the central core of the region's legacy cities is an important first step.
Youngstown has leveraged these assets with some success, Morrison added, citing Vallourec's new $1 billion pipe plant on former steel mill property. "These are also regional assets," he said.
There also needs to be an aggressive effort between counties and within counties to improve their public transportation network, Morrison added.
Transportation issues and job growth are inexorably linked, he said, noting employers are more likely to have a larger pool of skilled talent provided there is an adequate transportation network in place.
And, a third major recommendation is to preserve and interconnect the region's natural resources and quality-of-life assets, Morrison remarked.
"This is not a regional plan, but a framework," Morrison emphasized. "The decision to implement this is in the hands of the local communities."
Youngstown Community Development director Bill D'Avignon said his office has worked with the consortium from the start, and the effort has produced some "no-nonsense" recommendations that people should be aware of.
However, achieving consensus and developing a long-range plan isn't going to be easy, he acknowledged. "It's going to be difficult because I think some people are going to look at some of the suggestions and think there are winners and losers," he said.
"I don't think that's the premise," D'Avignon continued. "I think the real premise is to understand that there are opportunities within the core cities for redevelopment, and as a region we ought to start thinking about that."
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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