Youngstown Renaissance Bus Tour starts on south side to mark ‘both the old and the new’
The public is invited to participate in the first Youngstown Renaissance Bus Tour organized by south side residents ready to showcase what makes their neighborhood special.
How to join Saturday’s Youngstown Renaissance Bus Tour
The in-depth bus-guided tour will travel to seven different south side spotlights this Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon starting at South Side High School.
The Youngstown Renaissance Bus Tour’s final destination is Glenwood Grounds, where participants will get a free cup of coffee and muffins.
The motor coach tour bus will accommodate up to 80 participants, and tickets are $10.
Stop by Glenwood Grounds Coffee House at 2906 Glenwood Ave. to purchase a ticket or call Vicars at (330) 717-8953.
Glenwood Grounds is open from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Vicki Vicars and Jon Howell are some of the committee members who organized the tour.
Vicars is the director of mission, equity and resilience at Youngstown’s Ursuline Sisters Mission, as well as director of advancement at Thrive Mahoning Valley.
“The south side is filled with incredible people, thriving non-profits, healthy businesses, and faith-filled church communities,” said Vicars. “This is what this tour is about. Come meet positive people and visit institutions that are pouring hope and renewal into this community.”
7 stop on tour of south side
The bus tour includes:
- South Side High School - Meeting here at 8 a.m. to begin tour and board bus to six additional stops
- The Oak Hill Collaborative
- St. Patrick Church
- Ford Nature Center
- Youngstown Playhouse
- Bernard Street Development
- Glenwood Grounds Coffee House
“Each of these sites that we’re going to are like the lifeline of the South Side,” said Howell. “They’re excited about the Renaissance that’s taken. Every single one of these spots is excited about the old and the new south side of Youngstown. We are working together and collaborating to have a common vision for the revival of the south side of Youngstown.”
According to Howell, these seven destinations hold significance in the hearts of locals and showcase what it means to live on the south side for organizers of the tour.
“Deacon Jesse McClain at St. Pat’s church came to me about three months ago with this idea to do a tour on the south side of Youngstown,” said Howell. “The south side is the most populated side of Youngstown, and we have some some stable institutions, like Mill Creek Park, the Ford Nature Center, the Youngstown Playhouse, which is over 100 years old. We have all these older institutions that have just anchored the south side of Youngstown, but then we have these new things popping up.”
Open since 2021, Glenwood Grounds is one of the newer but already well-established community meeting places for the south side.
“Everybody on this committee has a tie back to the coffee shop,” said Howell. “That coffee shop is filled with people of every ethnicity, every social economic level in Youngstown, Republicans, Democrats; there are retirees like me and people working so there is a melting pot of Youngstown [coming together] on a daily basis in the coffee shop. These are the kind of things we want to reveal to the public.”
A Renaissance in Youngstown
Howell said the committee that started the Youngstown Renaissance Bus Tour chose the name carefully.
“We could easily have called it a rebirth. We could have called it a renewal or revival. But we all agreed the best term was Renaissance,” said Howell. “When you studied the Renaissance in Europe, it felt dead there for a while. They were not fully developed, and then someone came along who said, ‘We’re going to do it a new way.’ We’re going to burst a new life and energy into the world. That built itself up to this Renaissance where people [began] working together to bring something new, and that’s what we’re trying to do to the south side of Youngstown.”
After this weekend, Howell said they hope other parts of Youngstown can expand on the idea and create their own neighborhood celebration tours.
“This is the inaugural tour of the south side,” said Howell.
“We hope that each side of town will take our model, and we’ll share all of our notes and all of our planning committee steps, and hopefully each side of town will come up with a bus tour on their side of town, to highlight the good happening on their side of town. We do believe good is happening on all four sides of town, but we all kind of live on the south side, so we felt it was our obligation and privilege to do the first inaugural tour on the south side, because that’s where we live,” said Howell.