Each week at the Civic Commons we welcome new members with a personal email. Now that we have organization profiles, they are welcomed too! This provides an incredible opportunity to learn about organizations interested in our community.
This week I welcomed Shelly Mullen from the Lift Bridge Community Association. 
Shelly got involved with the Civic Commons by attending the December 2011 City Lab’s presentation at SPIRE Institute. Community Economic Development is important to her and she is extremely interested and enthusiastic about the potential impact this economic cluster could have on NE Ohio and Ashtabula County. Information about the City Lab presentation she is referring to is available in this conversation. The Facebook page for City Lab- Geneva Experience has terrific photos and clips of information. The Civic Commons also featured this group in one of our weekly emails.
In effort to learn more about Bridge Community Association I turned to my friend Google and found some great resources. These two videos provide a terrific introduction to Ashtabula and the renaissance on Bridge Street as it is referred to by the Association. It seems like bridges are the thing in Ashtabula. According to Wikipedia,” the Ashtabula lift bridge (also known as the West Fifth Street bridge) is a Straussbascule bridge that carries Ohio State Route 531 over the Ashtabula River in the harbor of Ashtabula, Ohio. Built in 1925, it is one of only two of its type that remain in service in the state of Ohio. In 1985 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was restored in 1986, and was also closed from March 2008 through May 2009, for repairs and repainting." There is even a Covered Bridge Festival in the fall!
In October of 2011 the Star Beacon, Ashtabula’s newspaper, reported the Lift Bridge group received assistance from a Pennsylvania consulting group Poggemeyer Design Group of North East, Pa. at the end of 2011 to complete their project. The Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County and the county’s Revolving Loan Fund contributed matching funds in order to secure a Community Development Block Grant and fully fund the project. Shelly Mullen and others are working hard to revitalize an area of the county and Northeast Ohio that was once thriving, but has seen better days. I often think about Cleveland being the hub of steel production in the late 19th century, but all ports along Lake Erie were. These ports can be great again with the help of people and organizations who care enough to make revitalization a reality.
This is just one of many community projects in Northeast Ohio that we haven’t yet highlighted on the Civic Commons. If you’re reading this and you think I should know about another project, please feel free to email me at taryngress@theciviccommons.com.
Copyright © 2012 Taryn Gress; available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
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