Staff photo / David Skolnick ... Jim Kinnick, executive director of Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, speaks to the Rotary Club of Youngstown on Wednesday.

YOUNGSTOWN — Jim Kinnick, executive director of the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, said the Mahoning Valley is progressing because of regional cooperation.

“It’s nice that all of the regional partners are unified,” Kinnick said Wednesday during a Rotary Club of Youngstown meeting. “When we go to Columbus or Washington, D.C., for funding we bring a group, and the first thing we hear back from legislators is, ‘You guys are unified here,’ and that makes a difference.”

It’s helped obtain funding for various economic development and infrastructure improvement projects, he said, including the Youngstown Innovation Hub for Aerospace and Defense, broadband access, the Diverging Diamond project in Howland, a study of the Madison Avenue Expressway in Youngstown and the creation last year of the Lake to River Economic Development.

“Hopefully all of our efforts will make a difference,” Kinnick said. “I’m sure it will. It’s exciting to be around.”

For the area to support job growth, it needs to focus on expanding and improving housing, Kinnick said.

Eastgate and other partners unveiled a regional housing strategy in January focused on housing stock, upgrading zoning codes, assembling available land, offering training to small developers and finding state infrastructure incentives for developers that want to build at least 200 houses.

“We have a strategy and a plan and we have to implement them,” Kinnick said.

Ultium Cells is seeking to have condos built in a community near its Lordstown facility to house employees, Kinnick said. Another effort is working to build vehicular access to large tracts of land for potential development, he said.

Kinnick mentioned a proposal to build an exit on Interstate 80 at state Route 304, which would give access to land on Youngstown’s East Side and in Hubbard Township.

“We have serious inquiries about the East Side of Youngstown because there is so much vacant land,” Kinnick said.

A major improvement project to Interstate 680 is underway, between Interstate 80 / state Route 11 and past the South Avenue interchange, Kinnick said. The work includes 7.3 miles of pavement replacement and / or rehabilitation, stormwater drainage improvements and new medians.

“It’s going to be completely rebuilt,” Kinnick said. “It’s a very important project. It’s a $200 million investment during the next four years.”

Kinnick started his talk discussing the $979,200 federal grant announced in January to study the possible elimination of a 1.5-mile stretch of the Madison Avenue Expressway on Youngstown’s lower North Side between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Andrews Avenue and potentially converting it to a low-speed boulevard.

The grant came from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program with funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

But Kinnick said Wednesday that the funding hasn’t arrived and confirmation of the money won’t be made until the end of May.

The study won’t have recommendations for about two years, he said.

Kinnick said, “This is a very, very difficult project to get funded in the next three-and-a-half years,” assuming the grant for the study is provided. “It’s the first step in a very long process.”