Authority plans multimillion-dollar improvements

The authority seeks federal money for a $10 million rehabilitation of the Brier Hill Annex.

Photo by: Robert K. Yosay

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HOUSING FACE-LIFT: Clifford Scott, executive director of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority, shows off exterior awning improvements funded by federal stimulus money at the Amedia Plaza senior high rise in downtown Youngstown, where the authority’s headquarters are located.

By Peter H. Milliken

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority has ambitious plans for renovation and construction over the next several years.

A $4 million windfall in federal stimulus money will be used to fund a variety of efforts, including a major rehabilitation of the housing authority’s Norton Manor senior high-rise on Youngstown’s East Side.

The authority is now relocating the high-rise’s occupants and hopes to begin 18 months of rehabilitation work within the next six to eight weeks, said Clifford Scott, YMHA executive director.

“We’re going to knock down some walls and do a lot of aesthetic improvements there, and it’s essentially going to be a new building,” with larger apartments, Scott said.

Other stimulus-funded efforts will be painting throughout Gutknecht Tower in Youngstown and installation of new kitchens at Vasu Manor in Campbell, both high-rises for the elderly.

Stimulus money already has paid for a new roof and exterior awning improvements at the Amedia Plaza senior high-rise in downtown Youngstown, where it also will fund new carpeting and lobby furnishings.

The authority has applied for $10 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to substantially rehabilitate the 1963-vintage Brier Hill Annex. Scott said he expects the authority will be awarded that money within the next 30 days.

City Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd, said the Brier Hill rehabilitation would be a neighborhood improvement that would complement the proposed nearby $970 million V&M Star Steel expansion effort.

“It’s absolutely a benefit and an asset. It’s a way of attracting business and residents and actually maintaining individuals to stay,” in the area, he said of YMHA’s planned improvement at Brier Hill.

Scott also said he’ll apply to the state for low-income housing tax credits to replace the remnants of Westlake Terrace with a community similar to Arlington Heights, which replaced part of Westlake a few years ago. That effort would occur over the next four to five years, he said.

In a property viability study released seven months ago, the EMG Group of Chicago recommended the authority demolish the remnants of Westlake Terrace, and the authority plans to do just that, Scott said.

Built in 1940, Westlake, one of the country’s oldest public housing developments, is overcrowded, has very small apartments and has no off-street parking, Scott observed.

“To compete with other subsidized housing, we’re going to have to do something to address those issues,” Scott said. Residents of that community continually ask authority officials when they will take action to resolve those problems, he said.

“I would applaud that,” Brown said of replacement of the remaining parts of Westlake with new housing. “Anytime we can get the state and local [officials] to work together on something, I think it’s of benefit to the citizens.”

In Campbell last month, Mayor Jack Dill called for adoption of EMG’s recommendation to close the Kirwan Homes, which has been a perennial drug-dealing trouble spot.

“I feel, given our improved security efforts in that development and our occupancy increases, that we’re going to continue to wait and see how that development plays out,” Scott said, noting that EMG didn’t give a timetable for closing Kirwan.

“As the economy continues to kind of spiral, especially in this community, we have a responsibility to residents, and that’s how we’re going to approach it,” he said. “We’re still in the fact-finding, fact-gathering stages to see the true viability of that development.”

The security cameras YMHA is installing and the lighting improvements it is making throughout its housing communities are “a great way to deter crime,” Brown said. He cited a domestic violence case where a security camera at Arlington Heights aided in prosecution of the offender.

milliken@vindy.com

SEE ALSO: As security tightens, occupancy rises in Youngstown public housing.