High school seniors offer ideas for downtown Ravenna landscape plan | Along The Way
A plan that award-winning Columbus landscape architect Jason Kentner did for downtown Ravenna two years ago is getting a fresh look from a group of special citizens.
The senior class of Ravenna High School’s William R. Day Civics Institute looked at aspects of the plan during a visit to the offices of Main Street Ravenna.
Matthew Wunderle, chairman of the four-year Institute, afterward invited his students to go on a walking tour of downtown Ravenna and come up with a vision for its future.
The eight seniors, with street maps of the downtown, spotted changes they would like to see employing text, illustrations and photographs. They were told to use their imaginations disregarding cost, zoning and taxes. The seniors made their presentations this past week at a symposium at the high school to which representatives of Main Street Ravenna, the Ravenna School Central Office staff and local office holders were invited.
Unsurprisingly, more landscaping, building renovations, small urban parks and pedestrian friendly walkways were themes shared by every student. Downtown Ravenna is a planned community (as opposed to an organically grown community) and the students envisioned taking advantage of its unique opportunities for creating a sense of place where people congregate, shop, dine and enjoy one another’s company.
All students favored making the downtown more walkable, some by closing Main Street between Sycamore and Prospect. Most students envisioned turning some city blocks into parks. One student proposed a dog park on one of the empty blocks.
Spaces behind buildings that face Main Street whose backsides benefit from lanes or alleys that enable vendors to easily supply stores were viewed as opportunities for miniature parks where people could gather in small groups. Most students opted for renovations instead of demolition. All saw the Buckeye Mall as having potential. One student, advocating beyond the original plat of downtown, said the community should develop a park on the empty land between McDonald’s and Ravenna’s Harley Davidson store.
The enthusiasm of young people inspires. Wunderle said he hopes some of his seniors, all of them college bound, come home to Ravenna and play a role in shaping the community’s future. The eight students have been going through a four-year social studies curriculum that begins with world history the freshman year, American history, the sophomore year, a junior year of federal, state, and local government, and a senior year of civics in which the students learn from office holders and government employees, sometimes by two-week internships in their offices. The seniors use The Ravenna Record, a compilation of Record-Courier columns by the late Roger Di Paolo, as one of their textbooks.
The ambitious curriculum was designed by a team of educators at Ravenna High School and first taught by Richard Sullivan who is now assistant principal at Brown Middle School. Wunderle, also involved in shaping the program, has been leading it since Sullivan moved from teaching into administration.
Wunderle acknowledges the current interest in STEM classes that teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but he said, “we also need to educate citizens who can function in and appreciate our democratic society.”
Because it is a relatively compact community containing most offices of county government, Ravenna High School students in the William R. Day Civics Institute are within walking distance of government buildings and undertake internships with city and county officials.
They also work with the Portage County Park District and the Portage County Historical Society with which they tour Maple Grove Cemetery to learn about the community’s history and its early leaders including abolitionists and those who experienced the Underground Railroad. They visit municipal utilities, the fire department, and those who work in law enforcement and criminal justice.
Because it is demanding, the number of students who complete the four-year program winnows itself down. The names of the eight completing the program are Kirsten Seman, Meleah Sawastuk, Kendall Chalkwater, Emmanuel Miller, Emma McHenry, Camryn Sobie, Ben Hatcher and Benjamin Rainone.
Wunderle said the William R. Day Civics Institute curriculum is still new and expressed hopes that its enrollment will grow. In addition to Wunderle, teachers in the program include Dawn Booher and Justin Mulheim. William R. Day, born in Ravenna in 1849, served as U.S. Secretary of State during the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and then as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
David E. Dix is a retired publisher of the Record-Courier.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: High school seniors offer ideas for downtown Ravenna landscape plan
