20 NE Ohio groups apply jointly for grant
Staff report
CLEVELAND
More than 20 public- and private-sector organizations submitted on behalf of Northeast Ohio an application for a multimillion- dollar regional-planning grant under the federal government’s new Sustainable Communities Regional Planning initiative.
This marks the first time that all of the organizations involved have applied jointly for a federal grant.
Involved locally are Mahoning and Trumbull counties and the cities of Youngstown and Warren.
The new federal initiative will provide as much as $5 million to pay for cooperative regional- planning efforts that integrate housing, transportation, environmental impact and economic development. The federal initiative is being managed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation.
It’s designed to encourage more regional approaches to land use, housing and environmental- and economic-development issues.
The Fund for Our Economic Future and several of its member foundations convened the consortium of regional stakeholders to apply for the grant. The consortium is called the Northeast Ohio Consortium for a Regional Plan for Sustainable Development, and it includes four metropolitan planning organizations, six county governments, five city governments and educational and nonprofit institutions from across Northeast Ohio.
The regional consortium expects to learn if it will receive a planning grant later this year.
The application was submitted formally by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, the metropolitan planning organization that serves five counties in Northeast Ohio.
The fund, a collaboration of philanthropy in Northeast Ohio, helped pay for the consultants that organized the consortium and wrote the grant application. The George Gund Foundation in Cleveland, the Raymond John Wean Foundation in Warren, the Nord Family Foundation in Lorain County, the Stark Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of Lorain County also contributed funds to organize the application.
The consortium’s application is a significant milestone in Northeast Ohio’s ability to act as a united region and be in a position to take advantage of an increasing number of federal programs designed to promote regional approaches to economic development, said Brad Whitehead, president of Fund for Our Economic Future.
“Regardless of the outcome of the grant application, more than 20 organizations from different sectors and different parts of our region have come together and made a commitment to long-range, regional planning. The active leadership from Akron, Cleveland, Youngstown and the many other cities and counties in the proposal development was inspirational. That type of regional commitment bodes well for our collective ability to build a more-vibrant economic future for Northeast Ohio.”
The consortium participants are Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, Stark County Regional Planning Commission/Stark County Area Transportation Study, Cuyahoga County, Lorain County and Stark County.
Other organizations involved are the cities of Akron, Canton and Cleveland; Summit County; Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority; Cleveland State University Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs; Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority; Fund for Our Economic Future; Regional Prosperity Initiative and Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority.