Smoky Hollow (neighborhood)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Smoky Hollow, also nicknamed The Hollow, is a neighborhood in Youngstown, Ohio, situated just northeast of Youngstown's Downtown, currently on the campus of Youngstown State University. A relatively small neighborhood, though it is currently in the planning process to be redeveloped into a more modern, trendy urban neighborhood.
[edit] Neighborhood
Smoky Hollow is an area of Youngstown that runs along the west side of Crab Creek near the Mahoning River. It got its name because of the smoke-filled air from the Valley Mill of the Mahoning Valley Iron Company. The area was originally owned by the James Wick family of Youngstown. By the late 1800s, immigrants begin building simple homes on this land and made their walk to work at the mills along Crab Creek. It was a high-density housing neighborhood of immigrants from around the world, however the largest group were Italian-born. In 1910 there were 576 families living in the Hollow - a mix of Irish, Italian, English, Jewish, German, and African-American. Businessman and pioneer of the shopping mall industry, Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr., was born in the Smoky Hollow section of Youngstown, Ohio in 1919. The neighborhood remained viable into the 1960s when it fell victim to suburban migration, university expansion, and real estate disinvestment.
Smoky Hollow borders present-day Youngstown State University, so several YSU facilities are in the Hollow. Another Hollow mainstay is the Mahoning Valley Restaurant (usually shortened to the MVR), an Italian bar and restaurant that has been operating since the late 1920s. Also located within the Hollow is the central branch for the Youngstown and Mahoning County library system, and contains more material than any other branch. There are also several homes within the neighborhood, although the population is fairly low compared to other neighborhoods.
[edit] Redevelopment plan
Aside from the aforementioned, Smoky Hollow is a fairly vacant neighborhood, and its proximity to both a college campus and a central downtown area made it a fairly attractive area for redevelopment. In 2002, a non-profit group called Wick Neighbors Inc. was established to aide in the redevelopment. Aiming to reestablish the area as "a regionally competitive contemporary neighborhood", the group's goal is to build the neighborhood to make it a more livable area, with plans to create housing, green space, retail, and business space in an effort to lure people and businesses to Youngstown.
