In new senior complex, both the apartments and silence are golden

The complex marks the first progress in the $20 million neighborhood overhaul.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
IT'S THE SOUNDS THAT ADA B. ELDER doesn't hear that make her new residence a happy home.
Elder, 90, lived in a now-leveled section of the Westlake Terrace public housing project in Youngstown. She lived nearby on the North Side afterward, too, but it was all too noisy, she said.
"Cars and kids and grown folks, too. It was just terrible there," Elder said. "The rest of the days I get, I'd like to be in peace."
Blissfully, she can't hear a thing outside since moving earlier this month into her new apartment in the Arlington Gardens senior citizen complex. Builders celebrate the building's opening today.
The subsidized $5.5 million, 40-unit building at Park Avenue and Wirt Street occupies a spot where Westlake Terrace apartments used to sit.
A world away
But the three-story building for residents age 55 and older is a world away from so much of the dilapidated housing stock nearby.
The foyer features ceramic tile floors, wainscoting and crown molding. Columns support the doorways. The color scheme throughout is yellow with green and purple accents.
A two-tiered gazebo gives residents on the second and third floors direct access to the outdoor sitting area. There is a small library with a balcony overlooking the foyer. Residents can socialize in a community room.
The apartments opened in July and are about half full, occupied mostly by single, female former Westlake or other North Side residents.
Filling senior citizen housing can be slow. Persuading older people to leave their homes can be hard, said Natalie Brown of Millennia Management, the building's property manager. Some people are hesitant to consider the formerly troubled North Side location until they see the apartments, she said.
"They walk in and they're like 'Oh, my God,'" Brown said.
Built the complex
CHOICE, Community Housing Options Involving Cooperative Efforts, built Arlington Gardens.
There was a need for senior housing when the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority razed much of Westlake, said Phil Smith, director of CHOICE, a nonprofit builder and developer. The demolition was for the $20 million Hope VI project to overhaul the area.
The new building gives some of residents who left Westlake a reason to return to their friends and neighborhood, Smith said.
CHOICE has built hundreds of subsidized homes around the city the past decade. Arlington Gardens is the agency's first multifamily project.
Smith one day envisions a twin senior citizen apartment building next door.
The building also marks the first progress in the Hope VI project.
"It starts putting a new look on the neighborhood," said Megan Shutes, Hope VI coordinator. "That building is a real good indicator of things to come."
Hope VI will remake the neighborhood, called Arlington Heights, that is bounded by U.S. Route 422, the Madison Avenue Freeway, St. Elizabeth Health Center and Oxford Avenue. The project eventually will include about 200 subsidized and market-rate homes, a recreation center, park space and a youth golf center.
New streets across from Arlington Gardens are built and construction is to start next year on the new homes.