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Dozens spruce up Mahoning Avenue
By Sean Barron
YOUNGSTOWN
In the 1990s, Roxanna Ray worked as a cake decorator at a Dairy Queen on the city’s West Side, but upon returning to the Mahoning Avenue business, she was dismayed to see it caked with weeds.
“It’s sad to see it this overgrown,” said Ray, also known as “Rocky.” “Things change.”
For about a year, the former DQ restaurant, in the 2900 block, has been vacant after the most recent owner filed for bankruptcy. What once featured ice-cream treats instead served up overgrown shrubs, a broken sign and other signs of neglect — until the former employee and a few others decided to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Ray, of Youngstown, was among about 70 people who took part in Saturday morning’s three-hour cleanup along Mahoning Avenue, put on by Youngstown Litter Control & Recycling Inc.
Participants met at the Mahoning Valley Lanes, 2617 Mahoning Ave., and concentrated on cleaning and beautifying mainly vacant properties along the busy thoroughfare on the city’s West Side between the Mahoning Avenue Bridge and Meridian Road.
Also represented were the Upper West Side, Chaney Circle and Steelton neighborhood groups; the West Side Citizens Coalition; West Side Nosy Neighbors; and the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood and Garden District associations, all block-watch and neighborhood groups.
Ray, mother of Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th, recalled having taken lunch breaks behind the Dairy Queen at an outdoor picnic table that was largely obscured by tall weeds that included small trees. She spent part of her morning removing weeds from the drive-through lane and near a large menu board.
Volunteers fanned out on both sides of Mahoning, most with weed trimmers, rakes, large black trash bags, shovels, push brooms and leaf blowers in hand.
It wasn’t long before several participants spruced up an abandoned used-car business simply by getting rid of weeds between cracks in the parking lot. Nearby was a pile of shingles someone had illegally dumped.
Some people such as Mary Dorney of Youngstown raked and bagged unwanted foliage while others swept gravel from sidewalks and cleaned empty lots where a Chinese restaurant and other businesses had been.
“If everybody pitches in here, maybe everyone will pitch in in our neighborhood,” said Dorney, of nearby Richview Avenue. “There’s so many businesses that shut down [on Mahoning Avenue] and don’t fix up their properties.”
Dorney, a teacher of students with special needs, said one of her main goals is to instill in her youngsters the importance of responsibility. That task is made more complicated, however, when adults fail to take responsibility for the upkeep of their neighborhoods, for example, said Dorney, who brought her 6-month-old daughter, Isabella.
The aesthetics of the corridor will vastly improve if business owners perform everyday tasks such as cutting grass and removing litter from their parcels, noted Dallas Staton, president of the Upper West Side Crime Watch group.
“We had our meeting and decided Mahoning Avenue needed cleaned up, so we put a group together,” said Staton, who swept debris from sidewalk next to the former Dairy Queen and bagged weeds and tendrils for the street department to pick up.
Saturday’s clean-up focused on beautification, largely because overgrowth is more prevalent during mid- and late summer, noted Jennifer Jones of Youngstown Litter Control.
“A lot of people travel this road every day and get an impression of Youngstown based on what they see from this road,” Jones said of Mahoning Avenue.