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Ohio development leaders tour Idora neighborhood
YOUNGSTOWN
A tour bus full of community developers rolled through the city’s South Side on Wednesday, showing progress the Idora Neighborhood has made in urban gardening and vacant-land use.
More than 200 community-development leaders from Ohio participated in the first day of the 27th annual conference of the Ohio CDC Association, a statewide organization of community-development corporations.
Veronica R. Sims, planning administrator for Akron Summit Community Action Inc., stepped off the tour bus to explore an urban farm on Canfield Road organized by the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.
Sims said it’s useful for organizers to come together and discuss how to combat blight and create a higher quality of life in urban areas.
“This is an issue in all of our communities,” Sims said.
Sims said urban farms are under way in Akron, and some even include bee-keeping. The next step, she said, is raising chickens.
“We want to grow economic development and feed folk,” she said. “If we can enhance the way people eat, we can address the way they think.”
Ian J. Beniston, YDNC deputy director, showed Sims and more than 30 others around the 2.5-acre parcel. Last week, YNDC announced plans for the Iron Roots Urban Farm at that location. Iron Roots will be the home of vegetable fields, a small fruit orchard and greenhouse, among other things.
Beniston explained that the vacant house on the property will be rehabilitated and used as a training center for programs such as the urban gardeners and Green Jobs training program.
The Idora tour also stopped at the Bottom Dollar store construction site, trail improvements in Mill Creek MetroParks and the Mineral Springs Research Garden. It was one of several city tours offered at the conference Wednesday afternoon.
In the morning, participants heard from Will Allen, founder and chief executive of Growing Power, a farm and community food center in Milwaukee. In 2008, Allen was named a John D. and Catherine T. Mac- Arthur Foundation Fellow and awarded a “genius” grant for his work.
The conference continues today with workshops at the Holiday Inn in Boardman.