What's Happening on Crawford Street?
This street is the subject of a Community Development Block Grant request
Crawford Street is not exactly your typical street. That is because there are two distinct portions of Crawford Street. The North half begins at East Water Street near St. Patrick’s Church and ends at Herrlinger Park as it dead ends at East West Street. Turn right at the dead end and go over the railroad tracks, and the far south end of Crawford Street picks right back up and dead ends at the Kirk NationaLease facility. Well, since the first of the year, the city’s Development Department has paid special attention to the north half of Crawford Street, that portion between East Water Street and Herrlinger Park.
Residents Take Park in a Survey
That attention is in large part thanks to a Community Development Block Grant that the city is pursuing, and the city is using the northern part of Crawford Street as the grant request’s focus. As part of the planning process for the grant request, residents along and near Crawford Street were invited to a number of meetings and asked by the City about their perceptions of the neighborhood and were given a small survey to complete. A resident within the neighborhood shared with this publication screenshots of the survey and the results, both are presented below.
The results of the city sponsored survey showed that residents of the neighborhood were looking for some improvements.
Residents that took time to fill out the survey stated that storm drainage, improved playground equipment at Herrlinger Park and park and recreational enhancements were needed in the neighborhood. There were also a few residents that took time to provide deeper insights on their answers and provided more in depth thoughts on the needs of the neighborhood.
Some of the comments on Herrlinger Park included:
Would like to see a nice swing set, maybe newer slides and a couple more public tables.
New lighting installed for safety around the park and down Race Drive (from Mulberry Street to Union Street).
Herrlinger Park needs new playground equipment.
Some of the comments on Storm Drainage included:
Would like to have drainage under the railroad underpass a top priority when we get significant rains (and that the pump is always working).
Need to have some drainage put in on Herrlinger Way at the parking area as the park flood there.
What’s Next?
Right now, the City is using this neighborhood as the focus of a Community Development Block Grant Program Neighborhood Revitalization Grant. Through this program, the state gives federal Community Development Block Grant funding to local communities in a very competitive program. Those applications that best meet the infrastructure needs of low to moderate income neighborhoods traditionally have the best chance of getting funded.
As the city goes through the process of getting these funds, the city will hold a public hearing on their Community Development Block Grant application and their plans to use the funds for Crawford Street. This publication reached out to the city and learned that this public hearing will be held on Thursday, May 23rd at 10:00 a.m. in the City Hall Basement Conference Room.
The application will also need to be approved by the City Council before it is submitted to the State of Ohio. According to the city’s Development Department, a city council committee meeting will be held on May 28th on this grant request and the application will be heard by the entire council on June 3rd. The application needs to be filed with the State by June 12th.
The May 23rd Public Hearing will be the public’s first opportunity to hear about what the city is planning and given the needs that residents have put forward, it will be interesting to see if those needs are going to be addressed by the grant request.
What do you think? What kind of improvement would you like to see on Crawford Street? What do you expect to see in the final plan? Are there other neighborhoods that need to be the focus of future Community Development Block Grant requests? Leave your ideas and insights in the comment section below!
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This is a complex topic. In many ways, little government does in an area like this can overcome a few other factors. The proximity to the train track is going to perpetually inhibit owner investment and upkeep of properties on Crawford, Clay, and Mulberry and everything in between. Even if the city tackled the issue of the trains' horns, it's still loud enough in those blocks to be an arguably unhealthy place to live long-term. Probably the best things the city could do to stimulate upkeep of those blocks is make sure streets, curbs, sidewalks, and water service are in good repair and then press correction of code violation. That enforcement should be relentless on absentee landlords. But it becomes a moral and ethical challenge to inflict lower-income owner occupants with greater financial burden. So here, providing assistance for the property maintenance remedies is what a responsible local government should try to do.