Monday, January 05, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- With the downtown moving in the right direction and people from outside the city headed here for shows, dinner and other entertainment, a renewed focus on the major corridors to the downtown is among the priorities Mayor John A. McNally IV has set for this year.
The end of 2014 saw one of his goals reached, consolidation of the economic development, community development and planning offices into one department. He tapped T. Sharon Woodberry to lead it.
In November, voters approved a charter amendment that permitted the consolidation of the departments. One goal of the new department is working with businesses along the corridors and residents in neighborhoods they connect to form associations that will have “better interaction with City Hall on a daily basis,” McNally says. Such efforts have begun on South Avenue in cooperation with Coca-Cola, which has “taken some initiative on that endeavor,” the mayor reports.
The South Avenue group will kick off its organizational phase with a 10 a.m. meeting Jan. 21 in Metro Assembly Church, says B.J. Duckworth, an account manager with Coca-Cola and one of the principals of the group. Coca-Cola has a bottling operation on East Indianola Avenue.
“We cannot first start to make change without first being organized and unified. So setting up a steering committee will be a big goal,” Duckworth continues. “The second goal will be working to unify the business so we can all work together to share services, help the residents that patronize our businesses and improve the conditions for business within the corridor. Safety will be a big focus as we will try to set up venues for the business to share information with each other about shoplifters, bad checks, et cetera.”
Another corridor McNally’s administration is studying is U.S. Route 422, the mayor says. “We’ve started some discussions with some business owners in the Salt Springs Industrial Park about forming a business association there,” he says. “I’d like to do the same thing on Glenwood Avenue with some of the viable small businesses in that corridor. So we’re off to a pretty good start. But that is one of the main aspects that this community planning and economic development staff will be involved in.”
A Glenwood Avenue association is being formed, in part, to respond to the announcement of a Bottom Dollar Food grocery store closing there along with its other stores, all of which were purchased last year by Aldi Inc.
The McNally administration has informed Aldi that if the supermarket chain does not intend to keep the store on Glenwood open, it wants the property returned to the city, which donated the land, “so we can either look for a grocery tenant or figure out some other community use for the building,” McNally says. The city has also requested that the store on East Midlothian Boulevard revert to the city as well.
Establishing business associations is an element in each of the eight neighborhood plans written by Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. Since November 2013, YNDC has provided neighborhood planning services for the city.
After completing a “comprehensive assessment” of neighborhood conditions, YNDC began what Executive Director Ian Beniston characterizes as “an extensive neighborhood engagement effort” in late winter and early spring last year. That engagement consisted of more than a dozen neighborhood meetings and some 50 stakeholder meetings.
“The important and core findings from our outreach were that residents and stakeholders are eager for more progress in housing and property issues, infrastructure repair and maintenance, community and safety, and economic development particularly along neighborhoods,” Beniston says.
YNDC used its findings, based on the data collected, to analyze to develop a twofold strategy that encompasses the development of detailed and specific neighborhood plans and a citywide improvements, he says.
“The citywide strategy focuses on best practices, policy changes, funding opportunities, process improvements and other strategies that can be used to make changes at the citywide level on the four priorities identified by residents and stakeholders: housing and property issues, infrastructure, crime and safety, and neighborhood economic development,” he says. Efforts to execute the plans are underway and will continue this year, he says.
In addition, “action teams” for neighborhoods that include Rocky Ridge and Powerstown have begun meeting regularly with others set to begin in other neighborhoods for which plans are complete.
The neighborhood plans are “really going to serve as a blueprint and probably a checklist of things that the city has to help accomplish not only in 2015, McNally says, but over the next four or five years.”
Downtown today is the beneficiary of decisions previous mayors, city councils and the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp. made 20 or more years ago, “when conscious decisions were made to take ownership of property, to chart a path toward improvements downtown,” the mayor says.
One decision made a decade ago is the acquisition of 20 Federal Place, an action right for the city at the time, but an asset McNally is now intent on selling. The sole bidder for the building is NYO Property Group, a downtown landlord and developer that this year will begin converting the Stambaugh Building into a hotel. The largest tenant of 20 Federal Place, VXI Global Solutions, which occupies more than 2½ floors, supports the status quo.
“Unless we can come up with a deal on a sale of that property that we think makes sense, not only for the city but also for a lot of businesses that exist in the building -- to be honest, especially VXI with its 1,200 employees,” he says, “we won’t make a deal.” The mayor says, “We have to be happy with it and see that it’s going to benefit the city as a whole. If we can’t reach that point, then we’ll maintain ownership of the building.”
Meanwhile, Youngstown recently took possession of an industrial real estate site. On Dec. 24, the Board of Control accepted 10.4 acres near downtown – the former Wean United site -- from Gearmar Properties Inc. As yet, no plans are in the offing, McNally said.
The city is working with the Mahoning County engineer office, along with the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber and Grow Mahoning Valley, to address needed improvements to North Meridian Road to the Trumbull County line.
“Additionally, we’re trying to move up a completion date of 2017 to 2016 on improvements to Wick Avenue,” a project championed by Wick Neighbors and CityScape. It involves relocating utility lines now above ground to underground,” he says. “It will make the [YSU] campus and Wick Avenue safer for everybody. It will make it a more beautiful drive into the city from the north and it’s going to be an example of the university and the city collaborating together to improve that section of town.”
One project McNally would like to pursue downtown is closing to vehicular traffic the section of Phelps Street between East Commerce and East Federal streets, once needed utility and sewer work is completed. He would convert it to a pedestrian walkway, thus providing opportunities for the restaurants and bars along that street, along with the shops and restaurants on the first floor of 20 Federal Place.
The mayor says he is getting estimates that would allow increased broadband capabilities for the industrial parks and along the main corridors. “That’s sort of a longer-term project but something that’s been brought to my attention in the last couple of months as something we need to do,” he says. “We’re trying to figure out ways to be a better city and to be more proactive in working with folks.”
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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