New Wick Ave. shines brighter to downtown

By KALEA HALL

khall@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Wick Ave Reopened

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What once was a dirt road leading to a coal mine on the North Side, Wick Avenue is now a shiny new cultural corridor leading through the YSU campus to the heart of downtown Youngstown.

Kalea Hall Interviews: Wick Avenue ReOpening - October 27, 2017

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Mayor McNally, CityScape Executive Director Sharon Letson and Youngstown State University President Tressel talk with Kalea Hall about Friday's opening ceremony of Wick Avenue.

What was once a dirt road leading to a coal mine on the North Side is now a shiny new cultural corridor leading to the heart of downtown.

Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel believes the reopened Wick Avenue will be a part of what makes YSU and Youngstown first class.

People, he says, will say: “I want to be a part of a place that looks like this.”

It took more than a year, almost $5 million and some grief from residents and business owners, but the new Wick Avenue shines brighter with its new lighting, is wider with improved sidewalks, and the views up and down the street are easier to take in with the utility wires now underground.

Stakeholders in the project gathered Friday to cut a ceremonial ribbon, finally reopening the thoroughfare that flows through campus.

There are noticeable details in the black lampposts and in the road itself with prideful YSU “Y’s” painted in the middle of some of the crosswalks.

“They have a sense of the old stately look of Wick Avenue, and at night, it really is beautiful,” Sharon Letson, executive director of Youngstown CityScape, said of the lampposts.

Letson and others saw the need for an update to Wick Avenue back in the mid-2000s.

“We walked up along Wick Avenue and we took pictures,” she said. “We took pictures of overhead electric lines, mismatched poles [and] really spots that weren’t safe to cross.”

The vision was to make Wick a point of pride for the city and the university. The way to do that was to clean it up – bury the overhead lines and come up with an aesthetically pleasing design and good pedestrian flow.

The project also included the replacement of a sewer line, two waterlines with one, making the four-lane road have one road in each direction with a middle turning lane, lane widening and new signs.

Wick is considered the “cultural corridor” of the city with its museums, the Mahoning Valley Historical Society and the university presence.

“People from all over the world come here,” Letson said. “We have some treasures all along [Wick].”

The project so far has come with a price tag of $4.5 million. The price might increase $200,000 with some changes that had to be made. YSU gave $800,000 to cover the light poles and the landscaping. The rest of the cost was covered by the city’s water and wastewater funds.

“It’s more than just a roadway; it’s a major gateway to the university and downtown,” Mayor John A. McNally said.

The Wick rehab and other corridor projects either completed or on the horizon are part of the city’s effort to improve its perception.

“I don’t think we can be proud of our city unless we are proud of the way it looks,” McNally said.

Next on the list for renovation in 2020: Fifth Avenue between West Federal Street and Westbound Service Road and possibly farther north.