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Youngstown committee approves request for displays to provide historical information at five city locations
YOUNGSTOWN
The city’s Design Review Committee approved a request from Youngstown CityScape to install display boards at five locations that would provide history and other information about those places.
The committee voted Tuesday in favor of the proposal to put metal signs on the Central Square, near the B&O Station, at the Bicentennial Memorial near the Tyler History Center, on Wick Avenue either by the Arms Family Museum or the public library, and at the Wick Park Pavilion.
“The signs will identify specific areas of interest and talk about history and revitalization,” said Phil Kidd, CityScape’s associated director.
The Central Square sign will be erected later this month while the other four will be up during the first few months of 2018, Kidd said.
The signs will feature written history, photographs and QR codes that will provide additional information about the locations for those using smart phones to access the codes, he said.
The signs cost about $1,100 each with funding coming from CityScape, J. Ford Crandall Memorial Foundation, Kennedy Family Fund, Mahoning Valley Historical Society and Ward Beecher Foundation.
Also Tuesday, the DRC approved plans for Lit Youngstown to emboss poetry in Youngstown’s sidewalks, but hasn’t decided on the locations.
The committee backed the proposal to put four poems on four separate slabs of concrete.
The embossing is done when concrete sidewalks is soft so the city has to determine the locations based on that. At least one poem will likely be on the newly improved Wick Avenue, said Charles Shasho, a DRC member and the city’s deputy director of public works.
The poems will be put on sidewalks by next July, said Karen Schubert, Lit Youngstown’s founder and co-director.
Lit Youngstown is a nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2015.