Joint Land Use Study for Youngstown Air Reserve Station nears final stages
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
About 20 people attended the third and possibly final public meeting regarding the Youngstown Air Reserve Station Joint Land Use Study as its consultants prepare to write a draft and then a final report. The process will wrap up in a couple of months.
Trumbull County obtained a Department of Defense grant that allowed it to hire the consulting company Matrix Design Group to help write the report.
The study’s goal is to identify ways to reduce current and future incompatible land uses around the reserve station to improve the chances the facility will continue its mission long into the future.
YARS is the Mahoning Valley’s third-largest employer, with nearly 1,900 people assigned there.
In a two-hour presentation at Baker Elementary School, Matrix consultants discussed a number of the most critical issues, such as height restrictions on buildings and other structures, eliminating birds near the runways and noise levels.
Celeste Boccieri Werner, Matrix vice president, said people sometimes think Matrix is working for the defense community when they write a JLUS, but the process is “community-led.”
Matrix representatives met with the study’s technical committee Tuesday and will meet today with its policy committee. The next step will be to “document everything” in a draft copy of their report and go back to the public for input.
She said a JLUS brings together the people of the community to “protect the health, safety and welfare” of the community.
She said it’s about balancing the protection of the military’s mission with the community’s opportunity for economic development and “protecting property rights.”
The area being studied is a circle 7 miles out from the center of the runways that the reserve station shares with the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. That takes in Vienna and part of Fowler Township, but it also touches a little bit of Bazetta Township and a small part of Cortland.
During the question-and-answer session at the end, a Vienna resident said she was unhappy to learn that the idea of building a new Mathews High School on land owned by the township next to Baker Elementary is being discussed, saying that is a “hot-button issue.”
In Matrix’s presentation were the words “consider partnership for construction of new high school facilities next to Baker Elementary School.”
The woman said she believes that would be a bad deal for the schools because it would involve the township swapping land at Baker for the high school property on Warren-Sharon Road. The township’s land near Baker is “all wet,” she said.
Werner said the idea behind it was to move the school farther from the runways, partly because the school is old, but added it is “good to know” that such opposition to the idea exists.
Jay Sweat with the Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment said he will still be around after Matrix has finished its work.
He will provide funding to help carry out the recommendations in the final report.