YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Residents along the city’s Glenwood Avenue Corridor and in its surrounding neighborhoods have an opportunity to provide input about that area’s most important issues.
The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. plans an open house from 5-7 p.m. Tuesday at the Jaylex Center, 2120 Glenwood Ave., where residents can learn about the Greater Glenwood Plan.
“It’s really an opportunity for residents in the neighborhoods along Glenwood Avenue to provide feedback on a neighborhood plan,” said Ian Beniston, YNDC executive director. “As part of this effort, we’ve already gone door to door twice to every house in the neighborhoods along Glenwood Avenue. Based on that feedback, we’ve put together a draft plan covering what most of our neighbors see as the priorities for the neighborhood.”
That ranges from housing, infrastructure, safety, businesses and conditions on Glenwood and the corridor to other neighborhood concerns.
Tuesday’s meeting will operate like a workshop, with stations set up for residents to offer additional feedback regarding what YNDC has gathered and strategies outlined to address it, Beniston said.
“The end result of this process ultimately will be in the coming months, a neighborhood plan that kind of guides the next five to 10 years of development of what I would call the greater Glenwood Avenue corridor,” he said.
That includes the corridor itself, from Mahoning Avenue to Midlothian Boulevard, as well as neighborhoods that adjoin or are adjacent to it on both sides of Glenwood. Those include the Idora, Indian Village, Newport, Oak Hill and Warren neighborhoods.
Responses from people who responded to surveys distributed during YNDC’s neighborhood canvassing include many regarding infrastructure.
“That includes everything from replacing sidewalks to improving streets, even how streets and intersections are designed,” Beniston said. “There’s definitely a large amount of feedback related to housing, and that covers multiple facets of housing, whether that be assisting existing homeowners and existing property owners with their property conditions, to eliminating vacant and blighted housing, renovating vacant homes and then building new homes.”
Residents also listed safety concerns, perceptions about safety, neighborhood economic development and bringing certain types of businesses to the neighborhood as topics needing attention.
YNDC canvassers received hundreds of detained responses, the executive director said, and what will be shared at Tuesday’s meeting is based on that feedback as well as stakeholder interviews.
“We do have a business association that meets routinely on Glenwood – the Glenwood Neighbors Business Association – so they’ve provided feedback as well,” Beniston said. “So it’s kind of taking all that, as well as data related to conditions and other pieces of information and what we’ve already done here the last 10 years, and charting a course of how we can build on that to further improve the neighborhood in a resident-driven or a neighbor-driven way.”