South Ave. businesses look to revitalizing merchants' association

YOUNGSTOWN

Businesses along South Avenue are looking to reform a merchants’ association with the hope of improving one of the city’s main corridors.

Fourteen business owners and officials, clergy members and retirees met Friday at the Metro Assembly of God with Councilman John R. Swierz, D-7th, Mayor John A. McNally and five members of the latter’s administration to discuss what can be done to improve the area.

The meeting was planned before a man was murdered Thursday evening in the parking lot of a bar on South Avenue.

“We’re trying to resurrect the old South Avenue Merchants’ Association,” Swierz said. “It will allow the businesses to be organized, and be able to present concerns and issues to the administration as a group.”

The association was successful in the 1980s, but has been dormant for years, he said.

B.J. Duckworth, manager of the Coca Cola Bottling Co.’s Youngstown plant on East Indianola Avenue, just off of South Avenue, said such a group is needed to “rejuvenate” the area.

“We know the power of businesses coming together to affect change,” he said. “We want to get this association up and running again.”

Reviving the group is “the first step in a process to unite the businesses together to show we support the area,” Duckworth added. “We’ve be able to leverage resources and manpower for all the businesses to work together and be more successful.”

As part of this effort, businesses on South Avenue will have a “neighborhood clean sweep,” from noon to 2 p.m. Sept. 12.

Read more about the effort in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.