Toledo's Almost Abandoned Beauty
Posted by Katherine Campbell on Saturday, September 5, 2009
Last month, as we set out on a Hinges of Hope trip in Toledo, we couldn’t drive our rental car more than 100 yards without passing a boarded up abandoned building; countless churches, community centers, business, homes.
Downtown Toledo is overflowing with historic buildings and luscious green life, but suffering from a drought of people to fill the buildings and tend to the greenery. The vegetation and hollow structures have been abandoned to moth balls and weeds.
In the past few years, the population in downtown Toledo has gone from 1/2 a million to 300,000. 15% of the population is unemployed, the average life expectancy has plummeted, and businesses have fled to the suburbs.
Michael Szuberla, the Executive Director of Share Our Strength grantee Toledo GROWS, cites two causes of the drastic Toledo population migration: the severely depressed auto industry and Ohio’s flat land that provides endless opportunity to sprawl. As a result, there is a vast shortage of jobs, businesses are empty, and the buildings are boarded up.
St. Anthony’s Church, located on the corner of Nebraska and Junction, went from being filled every Sunday with 2,000 members to 200. Now the church has completely closed.
However, those who’ve stayed in Toledo are holding on to hope. The church’s old rectory has been transformed into the Padua Center, a safe haven and service provider for the local community. The Padua Center houses a community garden, facilitates a summer feeding program, and the Executive Director Sister Virginia even raises baby chicks for the community chicken coup.
What stories have you heard in your hometown about people who are making an impact during the recession?
September 5, 2009 | | Tags: hinges of hope, recession, Toledo Grows
Comments for this post have closed.
