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Austintown applies for grant to keep green space as natural sound barrier
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Township officials have applied for state money to keep a natural sound barrier in a neighborhood.
Trustees recently authorized zoning inspector Darren Crivelli to sign and enter into an agreement with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Clean Ohio Fund Green Space Conservation Program.
“This is just part of our effort to maintain the integrity of our neighborhoods,” Crivelli said.
The $18,000 grant, including local funding of $4,500, is for about 3 acres at North Four Mile Run Road and Oakwood Avenue.
“It’s an undeveloped, a little under 3-acre area, and there’s quite a few homes, 10 to 15, on North Navarre Avenue that have this property in the rear of their yard,” Crivelli said.
“This would serve as a nice buffer between the property owners on North Navarre and North Wickliffe from the industrial corridor that’s on the east side of North Four Mile Run.” He added he hopes the township will secure the grant, “and then those residents on Navarre would never have to worry about any commercial entity in their backyard.”
Sections of the Wickliffe neighborhood have been rezoned to R-1, a specification for single-family homes only.
Keeping this piece of land as a green area is part of that process of maintaining integrity that Crivelli hopes to finish this year.
He also said that area is a flood plain with a creek.
The township has used this same grant in the past for land acquisitions. In 2012, Austintown applied for the same grant to pay half of the $73,800 cost of buying 12.5 acres of undeveloped land on the north end of the township park, 6000 Kirk Road.
“I would expect to know by the end of the summer” if this application is approved, Crivelli said.
“If we’re approved, I would like to have possession of the land by the end of the summer