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I'm not necessarily opposed to this but I'm kinda shocked it got approved considering Midway is such a nuisance to the university. It seems counterintuitive to build what will likely be another very loud/rowdy bar right across the street from the Union. I wouldve rather just seen this lot and Midway get redeveloped, but oh well.

Not exactly new news, but I came across this pretty interesting plan to renovate the old YMCA building on Warren's Courthouse Square and build a new 4-story apartment building attached to it. This would be a pretty major development for Downtown Warren if it pans out! https://www.wfmj.com/story/49698171/residential-development-other-plans-eyed-for-warrens-former-ymca-building

Can someone who knows more about photography explain how these photos can so clearly capture places that are so far away? Maybe I'm wrong, but I just imagine a person or normal camera wouldnt be able to see Detroit that clearly from Leamington

For what it's worth, as an OSU student, I've never met anyone who had a good experience in the Towers (besides saying the shared struggle builds character/friendship lol) - They're an outdated relic of misguided 1960s era urban planning. They're incredibly far away from campus and even though the buildings look cool from a brutalism perspective (and from giving the campus a mini-skyline), they're just functionally obsolete going forward. The North and South residential areas are so much better places to live from a planning standpoint. They're super vibrant, have great access to greenspace, classroom buildings, restaurants, gyms, and other amenities. In fact I'd say they're models for what colleges (or cities in general) everywhere should be doing. It makes perfect sense to me that the university would want to just expand those residential districts even if there's some sentimental value in the Towers.

New Coffee Shop on the West Side https://businessjournaldaily.com/muralists-paint-a-pleasant-picture-for-youngstown-coffee-shop/ A new coffee shop is opening up on Mahoning Avenue in the Garden District on the West Side! They did a really beautiful job on rehabing this building and the new mural really adds a lot as well! They also are redoing the building next door for their roasting facilities. Once this coffee shop opens up, there'll actually be a pretty nice strip of businesses on this part of Mahoning Avenue along with Casa Ramirez, Little Lou's Puerto Rican, and Hackett's Pub. Obviously the West Side has a long way to go before it could be considered a truly nice walkable neighborhood, but it is slowly making improvements and the bones are still there for it to become a neighborhood similar to Highland Square in Akron or something.

Wait, you're telling me Zanesville has a food hall but Youngstown still can't get in on this trend? I feel like cities are missing out on a huge way to revitalize their downtowns through a food hall/coworking space like the one in Springfield. I feel like that'd be an effective and relatively cheap way to bring people back into downtowns. I'll have to stop in Zanesville again sometime. There's a lot of cool buildings, but last time I was there, I'd say their downtown is still in really bad shape compared to other Ohio small cities.

I'm not too psyched about this project personally. I know it's easier said than done, but I'd much rather see a larger mixed use project on both this parcel and the Midway parcel. And honestly, the least thing that corner needs is another loud freshman bar like Midway, which is exactly what this would create. If you're definition of "campus culture" is loud obnoxious clubs like Midway, Bullwinkle's, and Big Bar, then so be it, but I don't think any "campus culture" is lost by getting rid of the most obnoxious bars/clubs on campus, which also happen to be directly in front of the Union. Allowing another bar on such an important corner would only add to this loudness and obnoxiousness - the bars on this corner are much worse than places like Village Idiot, Out-R-Inn, or even Little Bar.

In my opinion, you shouldn't make main roads pedestrian only, but side streets are still good to make pedestrian only - For example, Over The Rhine has been dead ending side streets and turning them into outdoor seating areas. Or in Cleveland for example, I think W. 29th in Hingetown would be a good candidate for pedestrianization because it's not a main thoroughfare but still has lots of businesses. As for Cuyahoga Falls, most of the businesses downtown were on Front Street, which made pedestrianization a terrible idea

I hate to sound like a NIMBY, but wow, that's a really terrible way to use an otherwise great site. There's so much opportunity to design a more architecturally interesting building which takes advantage of the beautiful corner location and acts as a gateway into the residential neighborhood behind it... instead we get one of the most uninspiring massive monolithic blobs I've seen proposed in this city so far. It's better than nothing of course, but what a waste of a great location. At the very least, I'd like to see some type of restaurant/cafe with a cool seating area on the corner. It seems like such an obvious way to add life to the building rather than placing the retail spaces on the side along 16th.

Wow, I don't know how I missed this. A new apartment building downtown is a pretty big deal. The design is horrific though in my opinion...

They're "iconic" but as a student at OSU, I can assure you that everyone absolutely loathes the towers and living in them seems to be a collectively miserable experience for everyone that I've met that has had to live in them. Sure, they look kinda neat and are an iconic landmark, but functionally they are and have always been terrible. I'd love to see them replaced with new towers that are more livable, but I assume they'll just replace them with mid-rise dorms. They're also pretty isolated from most of campus, so I wonder if they'd even build new dorms in the same location or not.

Obviously I'm happy to see new development like this around OSU, but am I the only one who thinks the medical center already looks painfully dated? The vertical blueish windows feel very 1980s/90s office park to me and from 315, it looks like an absolute monstrosity to me

Absolutely stunning pictures! Portsmouth is on my list of places to travel to (it's one of the last areas of Ohio I need to knock out on my 88 county tour 😆) but it's just ever so slightly too far from Columbus to do an easy day trip there!

Here's a random photo of Euclid Avenue I got the other day - it's crazy how different it looks since the last time I was in Cleveland and the Sherwin Williams Tower isn't even close to being finished yet! I always say Euclid Ave feels like a slice of Manhattan in Cleveland and the new Sherwin Williams Tower is really adding to that even more.

Honestly I can't blame the people moving to CDMX - If I had a work from home job and the logistics made sense, I'd love to move to Mexico City. Sure, the low cost of living is a factor, but honestly, it's one of the best urban areas you can find in the western hemisphere. Plus, you can't beat the food, culture, etc and the city avoids a lot of the problems and violence you see in other regions of Mexico. It's just a beautiful place and your money can stretch really far while getting more urban amenities than you can get in basically any US city.

I'm excited to see this! Honestly, it's kinda crazy that Ashtabula's Harbor District isn't already a major tourist destination for Northeast Ohioans. It's got a really quaint walkable main street right on the lake - hopefully this is the first of many more projects in this neighborhood!

I feel like there'd be some big pushback to there being too much height on the Methodist church site since it's set back fairly far away from High Street. That being said, once the University finishes developing University Square, it'll basically connect to this site, so I really hope they do something cool with it as this whole area has the potential to be a nice little gateway to the east campus neighborhoods. Personally I don't care if they don't go tall here, but I really hope they do something to give it a bit of a pedestrian-scale/neighborhood-scale feel. I'm envisioning a quaint cafe patio on that circular bend looking towards High Street!

Another building in Downtown got its ugly mid-century era facade removed, and wow is it an improvement! I think there's plans to make this building into a brewery or something if I remember correctly: I also noticed that Hunan Chinese, which has been open for ages, shut down and is now going to be home to a Tex-Mex restaurant called "Fourth Street Standard." It looked like a lot of the interior work is already done to. As for Martoni's Pizza next store, I have no clue what the deal is with that place. They put a lot of work into it and did a soft opening but it's been about 2 years now and they still never opened. I will say though, it might be the worst pizza I've ever had 😁 Downtown is also home to a really fancy looking cigar store called Chesterton & Company... like most businesses in Downtown, it's tied to Franciscan University/the Nelson Family. It's kind of funny, Steubenville's going through a weird Catholic-gentrification. I'm not complaining though because investment from the Franciscan University community in the rest of the city has been long overdue. Lastly, Steubenville Big Red High School is building a new STEM campus next to the high school. It's being built currently and will look surprisingly urban when it's done and will bring a much needed new building to Downtown.

Downtown Struthers Building to Become Art Colony https://businessjournaldaily.com/eyesore-in-struthers-to-become-art-colony/ The owners of the Soap Gallery in Downtown are renovating the Struthers Mercantile Building on S. Bridge Street to turn it into an artist colony. This comes in response to the Soap Gallery being forced out of their building Downtown by the new owners who are turning it into a private events space. The new building will be home to the "Sage Gallery" as well as a shop which sells local art and artisan products. There will also be 15 studio apartments in the building. There's already been some massive facade work done. It's a shame the building next to it got torn down recently - Downtown Struthers is pretty rough and has lost most of its old buildings sadly. But there's still some left to save and for the first time in a while there's some momentum in the neighborhood.

SMART2 Plan Progress Just thought I'd give you guys a quick update on the SMART2 plan's progress! If you aren't familiar with it, the SMART2 plan is a TIGER Grant funded plan to rebuild/road diet basically every street in Downtown. Federal Street: I'm surprised to see that work already started on Federal! I'm obviously glad this is happening, but to be honest, I almost wish they would've skipped Federal. I feel like this may be the nail in the coffin for the few businesses that survived COVID in Downtown. Honestly, Downtown has lost basically all of it's momentum and has been a complete ghost town post-COVID - it's really sad to see, but I hope that once all these construction projects are done, the city can successfully bring investment/interest back to Downtown given how much better it will look and how much more pedestrian-oriented it will be. One benefit of the Federal road diet is that it will reclaim a lot of sidewalk space by converting diagonal parking spots into parallel parking spots. It will also expand the center landscaped median all the way to Fifth Avenue like it used to be. Also, West Federal between Market and Phelps will also be closed as the city is beginning remediation work on 20 Federal Place and needs to put up a crane - they also demolished a mid-century awning/overhang on it. I really hope this building actually gets renovated, but I'm not super confident.

As someone who's younger, it actually makes me really sad that I wasn't able to see Youngstown before everything got torn down. It's even sadder how few photos/reminders of the past we have in these old neighborhoods.

1400 Market Street Project https://www.wtrf.com/wheeling/heres-what-wheeling-could-look-like-in-the-future/?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=t.co Some new renderings of the 1400 Market St. block redevelopment project. I'm not sure if it will actually happen because the buildings are in very rough shape, but these renderings look stunning! Wheeling really is on fire recently and has been doing some very high quality projects for a city its size! Especially given its economic constraints. I think there's an increasing group of younger people who have found the insane potential Wheeling has and how it's a rare example of a walkable urban city with very cheap architecturally significant housing.

Here's some before and after photos from Youngstown's neighborhoods that I finally got around to making! I wanted to take some better quality photos, but it's hard to find the time, so Street View will have to suffice... Most historic photos are from Downtown, but I'm far more interested in photos from average neighborhoods like these, but it's hard to find photos like these. I think it's pretty crazy how Youngstown went from having dense, lively, vibrant neighborhoods with beautiful architecture to now being largely a desolate urban prairie in many neighborhoods. The Hazelton neighborhood (East Side) from Center Street Bridge, 1953. This neighborhood was always a low-income slum for the most part, but today, very little of the original structures remain. Although it can't be seen in the after photo, the St. Nicholas Byzantine Church seen on the far right in the before picture still remains. This photo shows the corner of South Ave. and Lucius Ave. in the South Side's Cottage Grove neighborhood. The Coconut Grove building still remains standing today and is home to a dive bar (I really wish that old neon sign was still there!) - I'm sad to report though that this "after" photo is already outdated as the Time Out/Isaly's Building on the right has been demolished this year... Yet another old neighborhood commercial building lost. The corner of Broadway and Wick Ave. in the Wick Park neighborhood. Youngstown's North Side used to be a very quaint and vibrant neighborhood full of impressive architecture. Sadly, most of it is now gone, and in the case of this photo, not a single structure remains. The loss of Youngstown's North Side is incredibly depressing. In another universe where it was preserved, it could've been very similar to Cleveland Heights or Akron's Highland Square today. Somewhere on Rayen Avenue in 1953. It's hard for me to definitively locate the "after" location, but due to the curvature of the road, I'm guessing that it's somewhere around the corner of Rayen and Watt. This entire neighborhood was demolished for urban renewal very soon after this photo was taken. Rayen Avenue in particular was widened into a mini-highway of sorts, becoming the main thoroughfare between the East Side and Downtown. Nothing from this neighborhood remains. Arlington Avenue, near YSU. Technically, Arlington Avenue is still a National Historic District, however, all but two houses were torn down during "urban renewal" despite efforts by preservationists to save it. Most of the current YSU campus actually looked like this originally. However, despite the Near North Side having some of the city's most impressive architecture, it was virtually all demolished in order to expand YSU's campus. This is yet another example of a neighborhood which could have been a stunning walkable, urban neighborhood had it survived to today. Lastly, here's the corner of Oak Hill Ave. and W. Warren Ave. in the South Side. This neighborhood has always been pretty rough, including when the photo was taken. However, it still had most of its original structures standing back then. Ironically, despite being a very bad neighborhood today, this before and after might be one of the only "good" changes - despite the two old homes on the left being demolished, they were replaced with new homes in the early-2000s:

To play devil's advocate, those new places will probably cost double or triple what the old school campus dive bars cost. But yeah, I don't really lament dive bars dying off. There's still plenty in Old North and Fouth/Summit.

I'd really like the university to try to find a way to activate the greenspace along the river which will be enhanced with this project. As it stands now, basically no students go to the riverfront unless they're passing by on the trail. It also feels oddly disconnected from campus despite being right there - for example, there's no access point from the Shoe which seems crazy. I wish this area could turn into OSU's version of Scioto Mile but I imagine it'll end up just being a prettier, but rather dead, green space. As for the Little Bar project, I actually really like the design. I find it hilarious that the commission seemed to not like the design considering how insanely similar it is to the new North Campus dorms. It would fit in well, and I like the use of that color of brick for that stretch of High Street. It matches the historic buildings on that stretch pretty well I think. Also, I really wish I could've made it to that committee meeting... I was cringing so hard watching my friends show up to crusade for the preservation of a mediocre drinking establishment!