City Club hosting forum on Youngstown with national experts

YOUNGSTOWN

The City Club of the Mahoning Valley will have a free community panel discussion with three national experts from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11 at the Youngstown Playhouse called “Revitalizing Youngstown: A Candid Conversation About Challenge & Opportunity.”

Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., will moderate the discussion and panelists will be Evelyn Burnett, co-founder and partner of ThirdSpace Action Lab and ThirdSpace Cafe, who was raised on Youngstown’s East Side; Presley L. Gillespie, president of Neighborhood Allies, who has spend most of his adult life living and working in Youngstown; and Alan Mallach, a national expert on urban development who has advised several revitalization efforts in Youngstown over the past 10 years and author of a new book, “The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America.”

The panel will build on the ideas and strategies highlighted in Mallach’s book and discussion will focus on what Youngstown must do to continue and strengthen revitalization efforts to improve the quality of life for all residents. Topics may include continued improvement in the school system, dealing with the city’s looming financial deficit and reduction of poverty, and will integrate lessons from Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Attendees will have an opportunity to engage with the panel during a question and answer session afterward.

Doors will open on at 5 p.m.

Copies of Mallach’s book will be available for sale and snacks and beverages will also be available at the event.