Students unveil suggestions for downtown area

If the ideas are good enough, people will find a way to fund them, one student said.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Their suggestions ranged from using the under side of the Market Street bridge for festivals to creating information-based attractions for kids and young adults, to moving the bus station from one side of the Mahoning River to the other.

But what 14 University of Michigan architecture and urban planning students tried to do when they presented the findings Monday at the Chevrolet Centre was show ways Youngstown State University students can be drawn from the campus to the downtown.

Their work was part of a semester-long master’s degree class at UM.

And what nearly every one of the students stressed was that a large barrier exists just south of Wood Street — between St. Columba Cathedral and Commerce Street — that prevents students and others from making the short trek downtown.

Many of the students showed the same photograph of the grassy hill to the side of the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor (the steel museum), the two large parking lots at the bottom of the hill, and the obstacle the hill poses to students who might consider driving or walking to the bottom of that hill and beyond.

Odd street configuration

When Advait Sambhare of India first followed Elm Street south from the university campus past the cathedral and to its ending point in front of the museum, it made him ask the question, “Why isn’t there a street here?”

A block to the east is Hazel Street, which does pass down the hill but is not attractive to pedestrians.

Most of the students proposed parking structures, parks, sculpture, water fountains and other features for the hillside that would invite the YSU community to the downtown.

Many stressed the importance of providing a visual link from the university to current downtown attractions and to the Mahoning River.

Student Josh Anderson drew applause when he showed a picture on an overhead presentation showing the parking areas that dot the downtown.

“The land mass is inordinately large,” he said of the parking, saying that consolidating the parking into a smaller number of lots could provide the same amount of parking while leaving room for green space, parks and other “visual corridors” that would attract young people.

Now that the Youngstown project has ended, the students will move on to similar studies in Istanbul, Turkey, and New York City during the two remaining semesters of their yearlong program.

Official’s response

One plus of having the twentysomething students look at the city is that they are open to downtown areas’ being used for living and entertainment — not as a dead place, said Bill D’Avignon, the city’s Community Development Agency director.

As for implementing their ideas, it might be difficult to change the parking to a more centralized system because of the “third parties” who would have to participate, D’Avignon said. Creating more inviting green spaces, parks and attractions would also cost a lot of money, he added.

D’Avignon noted, however, that he was impressed with the wealth of suggestions for using technology to turn the downtown into sources for information and entertainment.

Student Kelly Koss was among those proposing entertainment opportunities in the Paramount Theater building on West Federal Street.

She proposed a facility that would be attractive to children during the day that would allow them to create music or play virtual reality games, and attractive to adults at night. Such young adults would be drawn to a facility where they could edit films or play virtual reality games, she said.

She also proposed recreational opportunities for the riverfront, such as a bike trail, walking trail, bicycle rentals, ice skating, and canoe rentals.

Koss said such ideas do seem difficult to pull off in “old, rusty cities” such as Youngstown and her hometown of Detroit, but grants can be obtained for such projects to make them feasible. “If people think the ideas are great, they will find a way to do it,” she said.

runyan@vindy.com