A New Outlook for Youngstown: Dr. David Sweet - CUDC Quarterly

VIEWPOINT - CUDC Quarterly 4:1 - Fall 2004

A New Outlook for Youngstown
Dr. David Sweet
President, Youngstown State University

There’s a quote from turn-of-the-century architect Daniel Burnham that I use often in my public speaking engagements since coming to Youngstown four years ago.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood … Make big plans."

I am a big advocate of making big plans, and that is what we’re doing in the city of Youngstown and at Youngstown State University.

The city and university historically have not developed any serious physical links despite the fact that YSU’s campus lies within a 5-minute walk of West Federal Street, Youngstown’s historic downtown main street. Both the university and the city have undertaken plans that ignore their mutual interdependence.

That has changed with the convening of the Youngstown 2010 planning process and commencement of the YSU Centennial Master Plan. Now, the two partners – the city and the university – are collaborating on the development of plans and initiatives that benefit both.

The process is beginning to bear fruit and promises to transform decades of mutual apathy in city-university relations into a sustained catalytic partnership that will put an end to nearly 30 years of economic malaise that has plagued the Mahoning Valley region.

Our collaborative university/community planning process began in the late 1990s, when the university and city independently decided to update their comprehensive plans. Rather than working in isolation and developing separate plans with no coordination, the city and university decided that participating in each other’s planning process was essential to the success of both.

The result has been a two-fold initiative that will result in the simultaneous updating of the city’s general plan and the university’s master plan. The former initiative, Youngstown 2010, began with a comprehensive, community-wide visioning process that involved the broadly-defined leadership of the Youngstown community. With the guidance of Urban Strategies Inc. of Toronto, the city’s planning department and community development agency developed a vision that sets out a framework for understanding and addressing the issues facing Youngstown.

That vision, unveiled in December 2002 to a crowd of 1,500 enthusiastic residents of Youngstown and its suburbs, articulated four themes:

Accepting that Youngstown is a smaller city;
Defining Youngstown’s role in the new regional economy;
Fixing "broken windows" by improving Youngstown’s image and enhancing quality of life; and
Issuing a call to action.

Since the unveiling of the broad community vision in 2002, the city and the university have been hard at work turning that vision into a specific, action-oriented plan. During 2003, the Youngstown 2010 planning team convened task forces dealing with housing, population, green space, marketing, neighborhood clean- up and downtown development. During 2004, the city and the university have hosted a series of neighborhood meetings throughout the city to hear first-hand from community residents. The results of both of these efforts will become part of the Youngstown 2010 comprehensive plan, which the partners expect to issue in draft form in early 2005.

The planning effort, featured in the August/September 2003 issue of Planning magazine from the American Planning Association, has won widespread community support and participation and sparked a sense of hope and direction throughout the Mahoning Valley.

Simultaneously, YSU and the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio have been engaged in updating the university’s comprehensive master plan for the campus and extending the reach of that plan to address the needs and opportunities in the surrounding residential neighborhoods. The plan is known as the Centennial Master Plan because it identifies initiatives that can be carried out in conjunction with the University’s centennial in 2008.

The YSU planning team is led by Hunter Morrison, former planning director for the City of Cleveland and now director of YSU’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies, and David Reed of the Urban Design Center. The team has engaged in extensive consultation with students, deans, senior staff, representatives of businesses, high schools and neighborhoods surrounding campus, as well as state and city officials. The team has identified nine themes or topics that must be addressed by the campus master plan:

Creating an identifiable and memorable campus Main Street.
Expanding and upgrading campus parking.
Developing appropriate classroom, laboratory and other academic spaces.
Developing indoor and outdoor athletic and recreational space.
Making student services more accessible by concentrating them and interconnecting them to the university’s "Welcome Center."
Increasing student housing on and around campus.
Improving the appearance of the campus by enhancing public rights of way, developing green corridors along key roadways surrounding campus and establishing attractive walkways and pathways connecting the campus to its adjacent neighborhoods.
Connecting YSU’s arts and entertainment venues and programs to downtown Youngstown
Improving safety and lighting on campus.

The next steps in the process include identifying near-term and long-term projects, developing preliminary cost estimates, analyzing implementation capacity and establishing a master plan time line. Particular attention will be given to projects that can be undertaken in conjunction with YSU’s centennial in 2008.

Some of the priorities identified in the plan already are underway. These include:

University Courtyards, a new 408-student apartment complex opened in the Smoky Hollow neighborhood adjacent to campus, serving as the cornerstone for future development in that historic area.
The Andrews Student Recreation and Wellness Center, a $12.1 million student recreation center on Spring Street. The center will further cement Spring Street’s role as YSU’s new main street. The rec center will be the first such facility on a public university in Ohio paid for entirely with private funds.
Expansion of the University Book Store adjacent to the Wellness Center. This investment will enhance Kilcawley Center, the university’s student union, and will reinforce the importance of Spring Street as a center of campus life.

The planning process has also resulted in the development of several collaborative relationships between the university and key stakeholders in the neighborhoods surrounding the campus. The university’s community partners include the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, the Public Library of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley, the YWCA, the Youngstown Community Health Center, Ursuline Academy, and the Youngstown Municipal Court. Each of these stakeholders is contemplating a major renovation or expansion which will impact and potentially benefit the development of YSU’s campus.

The university and the city have also built relationships with the neighborhoods surrounding the campus. The partners worked with the North Side Citizens Coalition to undertake a community master plan for the Wick Park model neighborhood, adjacent to the campus. This plan was prepared by the Urban Design Center and has resulted in a far more coordinated development effort in this important historic neighborhood. Last summer, the North Side Citizens’ Coalition for Community Development and the university celebrated the renovation of a 96-year-old house in the Wick Park area of Youngstown. It’s part of collaborative effort to revitalize the neighborhood just north of campus.

The university participated in the establishment of Wick Neighbors, Inc. to oversee the development of Smoky Hollow, a historic working class neighborhood adjacent to the university’s main campus. Under the leadership of YSU and St. John’s Episcopal Church, a group of religious, educational and cultural institutions convened itself to plan for a more vibrant neighborhood adjacent to the campus. The Neighbors intend to develop a mixed use urban community with apartments, town homes, offices, restaurants, cafes, parks and gardens.

The university’s Dana School of Music is partnering with the Youngstown Symphony to build a new recital hall next to the historic Powers Auditorium in downtown Youngstown.

The university is also partnering with the Ohio Department of Transportation and area stakeholders to upgrade U.S. Route 422, a freeway-style arterial that serves as the main entrance to the campus. ODOT has secured more than $500,000 in enhancement and aesthetic improvement funding to replace bridge decks, fencing, and landscaping along the entire freeway corridor.

In June, YSU entered into a partnership with the Youngstown City School District to locate a high school on the YSU campus. Youngstown Early College, supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will give high school students a head start on college. It is the first high school of its kind on a public university campus in Ohio.

There also are many ongoing projects in the city. This summer, local officials broke ground on a new $41 million downtown convocation center, which is expected to offer minor league hockey and other events. And construction crews are working to open traffic on Federal Plaza and remove an unsuccessful "pedestrian mall" built on top of the city’s main street in the 1960s.

So, as you can see, Youngstown is making big plans—and carrying them out!

But, most importantly, we’re establishing relationships, and not just relationships between the city and the university. We’re building relationships with institutions and organizations that in the past have been left on the outside looking in.

And perhaps most importantly, we’re developing linkages with people, whether it is a student at YSU or a resident on the South Side of the city. These personal relationships, ties and linkages will provide the foundation for Youngstown’s future, a future that shines with hope and prosperity.