City Council to Consider Hiring Planning Consultant
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – City Council tonight will consider an ordinance to advertise and enter into an agreement with a consultant to provide planning services for a downtown and major corridor plan. The objective is to revitalize the business districts along the city’s major corridors, including Market Street, Mahoning Avenue and Glenwood Avenue, and hopefully stimulate business along those arteries.
The ordinance is sponsored by members Annie Gillam, D-4th Ward. Paul Drennen, D-5th Ward, and Janet Tarpley, D-6th Ward.
“Downtown has a magnificent renaissance going on,” Tarpley said. “We’re trying to take what’s working and make it bigger and better, expand it.” Downtown is one of the city’s fastest growing residential neighborhoods, she added.
The city has lacked a full-time planning director since chief planner Anthony Kobak’s departure several years ago. Community development director Bill D’Avignon now oversees the planning department as well. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “professional advice” was to try this approach, said Tarpley, whose ward includes part of Market Street.
Tarpley expects any proposal to involve infrastructure upgrades as well as cleanup of dilapidated properties along the arteries. For downtown, she would like to see a hotel and a movie theater.
Last month, local developer Dominic Marchionda said he and a development group were looking at options to convert the Stambaugh Building downtown into a hotel and had a feasibility study under way exploring that option.
“I really want it to happen. I think that would really work,” Tarpley said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.