Tyler Shonts of Akron, with Miller Pipeline, spreads dirt around a sidewalk that was redone after a pipeline was installed on 12th Street near Park Drive on Thursday while Hunter Bussey-Simms looks on from a backhoe. Sidewalk repairs are among the priorities for $750,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds awarded by the Mahoning County Commissioners for improvements along the 12th Street corridor.

CAMPBELL — It likely will be a few months before a sharper picture of how the city intends to spend several hundred thousand dollars emerges, but the image has come into better focus.

“It will be to get people outdoors more,” Mayor Bryan Tedesco said after Wednesday’s city council meeting.

Tedesco was referring to $750,000 that Mahoning County commissioners awarded the city in December 2021 that will go toward the 12th Street Corridor Project, a large part of which is to include revitalization and blight remediation.

City officials will be working with the Community Improvement Corp., the economic-development arm of the commissioners, on the project. The 12th Street area was selected mainly because it represents a vibrant mixed-use community of businesses and residents that showcases the vitality of the city’s cultural legacy, Tedesco has said.

The $750,000 likely will be spent in several core areas: foreclose abandoned properties and to conduct spot demolitions; rehabilitate certain abandoned structures that have potential for re-use; offer grants to improve the facades of small businesses; improve accessibility to the corridor via sidewalk repairs and added street lighting; and convert empty lots into greenspaces for community gatherings, the mayor noted.

The project will be discussed at several additional meetings before city council comes up with a final plan in early January. The public will be informed of such a plan, Tedesco said.

Earlier this year, Sarah Lown, the Western Reserve Port Authority’s public finance manager, said the work also could include better access to St. John The Baptist Catholic Church, one of three Catholic churches in Campbell to remain open under a reorganization plan by the Diocese of Youngstown. The port authority manages the CIC for the commissioners.

Also discussed at the meeting was the installation of about 100 new signs on poles lining Coitsville Road. They soon will be in place to honor veterans of all military branches, the mayor added.

In addition, applications will soon be available to those interested in taking a civil-service exam to join the city police force. The exam is to be given in January, though Tedesco was unable to provide a date.

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