Students join in renovating city

WARREN - New York students are back in town, this time joined by Kent State University landscape architect students to work on the Robins Project.

Students sat down with the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership on Saturday to present ideas to community members about renovating the city, particularly vacant lots in the designated Garden District in downtown Warren.

"Our philosophy is that everything we touch will be resident-driven," Matt Martin, executive director of The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, said. "Applications from residents will only be approved and successful if residents keep up with the project."

Kent State University's involvement branched from The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership visiting the campus and finding that landscape architecture students were interested in urban issues such as foreclosed and vacant spaces, Interim Director of Landscape Architecture Charles Frederick said.

"When they showed us a couple neighborhoods that they wanted to work on, I got really excited to start," Frederick said.

Returning are students from the New School in New York, who first visited the long-closed and vacant Robins Theater in downtown Warren a year ago. The students worked on the building and pitched plans that ranged from renovating the theater into a multipurpose building encasing a restaurant, brewery, recording studios, an event hall, or woodshop, among other ideas.

The thought was to make Warren a "cultural hub."

The New School took an interest in the city as a whole rather than just the renovation of The Robins Theater. They call this project the "Integral City."

"Integral means to make it more complete and that's the heart of your city - to make the center stronger makes the community stronger," the Robins Project organizer Melissa Holmes said. "As soon as the theater (space) opens up, downtown will really benefit from having the large entertainment venue."

Elliot Killen, a landscape architecture graduate student at Kent State and Warren native, also sees the benefits of a revitalized downtown area.

Read the original:
Students join in renovating city