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The focus of the new Youngstown department will be on growth in neighborhoods and main corridors
YOUNGSTOWN
With city voters approving a charter amendment to combine Youngstown’s economic development office and community development agency, the new department will get to work in January.
“We want the focus of this department to be improving the neighborhoods and the main corridors,” said Mayor John A. McNally, who urged city council to put the charter amendment in front of voters to combine the two into the department of community planning and economic development.
“We need to pay more attention to what’s going on in the neighborhoods with blight remediation and saving structures that can be used for economic development,” he said. “I want them to be involved in neighborhood improvement and focusing on our main corridors like South Avenue and Glenwood Avenue. The work with [larger businesses] is important, but we envision them doing that same good work elsewhere.”
The Nov. 4 ballot issue easily passed with 64.6 percent of the vote supporting the measure.
The new department initially will work out of an office on the sixth floor of the city-owned 20 Federal Place downtown office building. CDA is currently on the second floor of the city hall annex, and economic development is on the ground floor of 20 Federal Place. McNally eventually wants the office on city hall’s second floor, and to relocate municipal court and the clerk of courts, which currently occupy that floor, to the city hall annex.
“Economic development and community development are the key components to revitalizing the city,” said Bill D’Avignon, CDA director. “There’s not been a whole lot of economic development in the city except the industrial areas and downtown. There needs to be a focus on the various neighborhoods. We need to identify sites for potential reuse and a focus on marketing those properties.”
Combining the two departments was one of numerous recommendations in the Youngstown Plan, a $250,000 report in 2013, to make the city government more efficient.
The report states: “A consolidation of these offices will create a robust department that can align resources, strategies and initiatives for [the] revitalization of Youngstown.”
The charter amendment gives McNally the power to hire an at-will employee to head the department of community planning and economic development, though he said he still hasn’t decided whether to promote D’Avignon or T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s economic development director, or hire someone else for that job.
The two departments, which will merge in January, have 13 employees — most at the CDA — with one retiring in a week and another expected to leave in the coming months, McNally said. The mayor said he expects no more than 12 jobs in the new department.
“We’ll be able to show some savings on employee costs, but that wasn’t the overriding goal,” he said. “The goal was to bring them together so they can work for the betterment of the neighborhoods.”
Among the top priorities of the new department, McNally said, will be to find grocery stores interested in locating in the city, particularly downtown and on the South Side.
“We need to help find stores in the city’s food deserts,” he said.
McNally is looking for a grocery store to go into the 17,000-square-foot Bottom Dollar location on Glenwood Avenue. The only full-service grocery store on the South Side is closing at the end of the year. Bottom Dollar was purchased by ALDI, which hasn’t said if it will reopen the site.
“We’re looking at smaller economic development projects in our neighborhoods and corridors while still focusing on the larger projects that come along,” McNally said. “Zoning and planning issues fall under this department so the work is very important.”