Ian Beniston credits the origins of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. (YNDC) to a specific exchange between a resident and the Wean Foundation. 

It was 2007 and Beniston, who grew up on the north side of Youngstown, was pursuing a graduate degree in city planning at The Ohio State University in Columbus. For the past few months, he had been working with six other graduate students and a number of residents in the Idora neighborhood on the south side of Youngstown to develop a neighborhood plan. 

At the time, there wasn’t a lot of neighborhood planning happening nor an existing infrastructure to support a plan’s implementation. But the city was supportive of the effort and wanted to see more neighborhood plans take shape. Beniston had read about how the Wean Foundation was undergoing a strategic planning process of its own and shifting to a private foundation structure.

“I figured they were making changes in how they did grantmaking,” Beniston said. “I sent one of the neighborhood leaders, a larger-than-life character known as Big Jim, with a copy of our plan and told him, ‘Find this guy, Joel Ratner, and tell him we need funding.’” 

Big Jim went to Warren and found Ratner, who had just been hired as the Wean Foundation’s first president. Their exchange set in motion a series of events that would eventually lead to the establishment of Youngstown’s first neighborhood development corporation, a significant milestone in resident-led community building in the Mahoning Valley.  

“We said, ‘There is something we can collectively do to start to improve our neighborhoods,’” Beniston said. “It’s grown and evolved in a way that I didn’t know was possible for us to achieve.” 

“I don’t get excited about fixing one house. I get excited about someone telling me we reduced vacancy from 20% to 4%. That is real change to me.”

Staying True to Residents

All along the way, the organization has remained true to the desires and needs of residents. “We’ve consistently been adding capacities and programs and services that go back to the things we were originally told in 2007,” he said. 

Today, YNDC is a multimillion-dollar organization with nearly 30 full-time staff, supporting neighborhoods across the city. The organization focuses on improving housing quality, including new construction and revitalization of existing properties. YNDC also owns commercial buildings that house neighborhood-serving businesses and runs an afterschool program and a produce prescription program. 

“What we’re doing is making resident-driven improvements in neighborhoods that have experienced a disproportionate amount of disinvestment, due to many factors, one of which is race,” Beniston said. “That would have never happened without the partnership and the investment the Wean Foundation has made in our organization to grow and flourish and really get results. … That’s ultimately allowed us to attract investment from other funders and supporters. They took a chance on this organization.”

Seeing Results

As Beniston walks to the office each day from his home in the Idora neighborhood, he can see the results of YNDC’s work all around him. Take, for instance, Glenwood Grounds, near the corner of Canfield Rd. and Glenwood Ave. The owners moved to the neighborhood a decade ago to support its revitalization and over the last several years, with the support of YNDC and many others, established a coffee shop and community gathering place that is run by a group of volunteers. 

Just a stone’s throw from Glenwood Grounds is the Glenwood Fresh Market, which opened soon after Glenwood Grounds in 2022. The market is a produce prescription program for households earning less than 200% of the federal poverty guidelines and with a predisposition for diet-related health conditions. Participation in the program is free, as is the produce. The market operates like a traditional store, where individuals shop for produce items they want, but use program credits to pay for them. Through partners, the store also offers cooking demonstrations, nutrition education, health screenings, and other programming.

In a little over two years, more than half a million dollars’ worth of fresh fruits and vegetables have been distributed to more than 2,500 participants who’ve made more than 36,200 visits to the store. 

Despite these and other successes, Beniston isn’t resting. Very much a big-picture person, he is motivated by a desire for total transformation.  

“We’re not anywhere close to where we want to be,” Beniston said. “I don’t get excited about fixing one house. What I get excited about is someone telling me we reduced vacancy from 20% to 4%. That is real change to me.”