Get involved in designing futures of Y’town, Warren

On display in the John J. McDonough Museum of Art near downtown Youngstown are prescriptions for strengthening the Mahoning Valley’s two largest communities.

There are scale models and renderings of proposed buildings, open spaces, parks and gardens in downtown Youngstown. The exhibition also includes design strategies for Warren’s Garden District and historic Robins Theatre.

But those are the visions of economic- development specialists and university faculty and students.

Thus the question: What do residents of the two cities and other stakeholders, such as the business communities, think about the proposals that are on display?

Through July 22, the public can visit Youngstown State University’s McDonough museum on Wick Avenue, study the renderings and designs and render an opinion.

At the McDonough – the exhibit is titled “Changing Views/Designing Youngstown’s Future” – the displays include work by Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design and KSU’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Lawrence Technological University in Detroit and Ball State University in Indiana.

The projects were undertaken in coordination with YSU’s Regional Economic Development Initiative.

“It’s nice to not just have a book or press release but to have a storyboard and the ability to show all this work to the public,” said Dominic C. Marchionda, city-university planner with REDI. “It’s easier for the community to provide meaningful feedback by seeing it for themselves.”

RECENT WARREN EXHIBITION

At a recent exhibition at the Shortcut Gallery in downtown Warren, undergraduate students from the Parsons School of Design created architectural designs for a vacant home at 355 Washington St. NE.

Their ideas were centered on the following themes: gathering center, culinary training hearth, greenhouse and educational resource.

The building is a vacant, 2,868-square-foot home built in 1912 in what the nonprofit Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and others call the Garden District, just north of downtown. TNP owns the home through its partnership with the Trumbull County Land Bank, and has worked with Parsons students for several years. TNP has been collaborating with the university’s students and professors to come up with ideas for how to turn vacant structures into useful spaces again.

It is worth noting that many of the ideas set forth in the displays have been discussed for several years.

Indeed, in the last mayoral election in Warren, the Garden District was a major issue because of neighborhoods hard hit by economic decline.

In Youngstown, there has long been talk of tying Youngstown State to the downtown area so the university and the city can both benefit from a closer relationship.

RIVERFRONT DEVELOPMENT

Another project that is on the drawing board is the development of the area along the Mahoning River.

For years, the Mahoning River Consortium, a local grass-roots organization, has been working to improve the quality of life in the Mahoning Valley by promoting the wise use of the river and its watershed. The consortium is a diverse group of people involved in many projects and partnerships.

Youngstown city officials have long talked about pursuing development along the river, the way other communities have done with their waterways.

But one of the most-important projects identified by planners and students is improvement of the city’s corridors, such as the areas along Wick and Fifth avenues.

In conjunction with that, there’s still a need to upgrade the entry ways into the city of Youngstown.

As we’ve said on numerous occasions about the appearance of Youngstown, first impressions count when you’re a visitor driving into the city.

For example, the empty lot at Belmont Avenue and Gypsy Lane – across from Walgreens – is far from welcoming.

To be sure, there are many other projects that should be pursued, but as with other development blueprints, such as Youngstown 2010, the challenge is to come up with the money to make them a reality.

With Youngstown and Warren both dealing with fiscal uncertainties, the next stage of the current designs for the future should be to identify sources of money, both public and private.