Senior Project

Creating Community by Brian Cetina

Fred Bohn opened his record store 28 years ago in a small Pennsylvania town, just outside of Pittsburgh.

He’s never thought about moving. He has chosen to keep his store, Attic Records, in Millvale, Pa. because the location is close to his home, the cost of the building and space were reasonable and the community is friendly and hard working. Bohn is one of 15 business owners surveyed by a Youngstown State University journalism student examining the issue of why businesses choose certain communities. There are a lot of elements that businesses look at when choosing which community to house their business. An examination of those elements may offer revealing information for Youngstown and the surrounding community, which has been struggling with a stalled economy for decades.

government,YSU and the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber, is lobbying YSU alumnae and others to come home and launch businesses in the Mahoning Valley. They are offering financial incentives and are trying to tout the area as a great place for entrepreneurs. But their approach, acTen of fifteen businesses polled said that location and cording to the sampled business owners, may not be cost were the key elements realistic on all fronts. they first looked at when For instance, moving or starting a business. Youngstown’s crime rate is Other elements that followed were education, popu- high, ranking 15th on the list of most dagerous cities lation, and crime rates. behind Cleveland which falls Local, state and fedin at number 11. eral officials, who have long Although crime went wrestled with how to pull down 13 percent for the first Youngstown out of its fisix months, Mayor Jay Wilnancial sag, have been trying liams is hiring more officers to erase the area’s negative to patrol. stigma and high unemployThe unemployment rate ment rate. The Grow Home initiain Youngstown, now at 7.5 percent as of September, is tive, a partnership between The findings suggest that business owners are seeking a few simple features in communities: * Cost of living. * Location. * Strong schools. * Safety.

about 1.5 percent above the national average of 6 percent. Youngstown’s schools are in serious financial and academic trouble and were placed in fiscal emergency in 2006. Additionally, the city school students consistently score lower than any other school district in the county and most in the state on standardized tests. But, for the cost of living, Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley are strong contenders. The cost of living in the Mahoning Valley is reasonable and affordable compared to cities like Cleveland or New York. The cost of living index in Youngstown is 79 percent out of the national average of 100.

Akron offers model Scott Baughman, manager of Public Affairs at Goodyear Tire in Akron, said the city of Akron has come along way and is beginning to build big business. Baughman said businesses in Akron and Youngstown and all over the world have to work together in a spirit of “partnership” to keep interests of each group balanced

against the other. Community is key in bringing business to any city, Baughman said. “A community is a place where people live together, with similar values and are sharing common interests such as businesses and schools,” he said. “With Akron, we are very lucky to have such a great community that has competitive wages and many diverse interests of population.” Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams said he sees Akron as an ideal role model for this area because of how it has rebounded in the wake of the collapse of much of its industry. That rebounding, however, will take time, creativity and money, officials said.

What does it take? Location is key, said one Cleveland florist. Paradise Flowers, now operating in Cleveland, opened its doors 30 years ago because its owner found a location where his would be the only flower shop in the area. Located near funeral homes and hospitals, owner

Ed Paradise knew the neighboring businesses would support his. Familiarity is also important, said Attic Records Store owner Fred Bohn, who opened his business in his hometown of Millvale in 1980. “I decided to open a business selling something I love and the area we are located in is right near my house and centrally located between Pittsburgh and Cleveland,” he said. Bohn also stressed the importance of an affordable cost of living as a key factor in deciding where to house his business. “The living costs here [in Millvale] are pretty cheap and the location is pretty good which helps bring in the business. We got a deal on the building and the size. Getting something like this in other cities might be ten times as much,” Bohn said. “You have to look for affordability and where you are likely to grow and expand like we did from one store front to four.” Another business owner in the neighboring state of West Virginia cited location and education as the key factors in where to locate and then expand their business.

The River City Tavern in Parkersburg, W.Va. opened in 2001 because there weren’t too many full service restaurants there that weren’t food chains. River City opened a second restaurant across the Ohio River in Marietta in 2006 because restaurant owners knew it was closer to a college town that would translate into more customers and a more educationally engaged community. “Being near a college town made us feel like the community had great education,” said office manager Melody Smith.

Between Marietta College and the different schools in the area, we knew this would be a good place to share a business and raise families, plus having the two businesses so close together meant our employees could work at both stores without having to travel too far,” said Smith. Teletronics Inc., headquartered in Cleveland, also has an office in Toledo. The business, which started in 1980, is family-owned and employs 30 in Cleveland and seven in Toledo. Teletronics, which helps companies with computer projects, also had offices in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Akron but was forced to close them due to low revenue.

The Toledo office still remains because of the effort by the employees and their fight to keep the business in the community. Ken Robedeau of Teletronics said, the office in Toledo can remain open because there isn’t any hard competition and they can work with other businesses in the area. “With Teletronics being local to Cleveland and very small, the bigger names became more trusted so we lost money,” said Robedeau. “Keeping the headquarters in Cleveland always allows us to have business while the office in Toledo being one- of-a-kind gives us another chance to flourish.”

“When the company was started, we looked for a place that was essential to travel,” Robedeau said. “Cleveland is a central city that makes travel from outside cities like Pittsburgh or even Youngstown easy access.” Robedeau said he did not know enough about Youngstown to say whether it would have ever been a possible location for one of the company’s satellite offices. Paradise, however, from the

flower shop, said he used to have a store in the Southern Park Mall in Boardman. Twenty years ago he owned Alexander Flowers in the Southern Park Mall. “We did pretty well in the mall, but we wanted to move to a bigger city with more opportunity at the time,” Paradise said. The same desire to be in a bigger city motivated him to open his second store in the Cleveland area. He said he

added his Parma store because it is one of the largest cities in the state. “Parma has a good middleclass and working-class kind of people,” he mentioned. “Plus it is 15 minutes from Cleveland.” Paradise had a few suggestions on what Youngstown could do and some things he would look for if he were going to add another shop somewhere.

What is the YBI? The Youngstown Business Incubator is recognized as a premier technology enterprise development program that uses entrepreneurial expertise, facilities, professional relationships, and a resource network to link businesses together to create jobs. The YBI mission statement is to cultivate, accelerate and promote the formation, growth, commercialization and innovation of technology-based business by providing “comprehensive, high quality entrepreneurial services and resources in a robust environment that promotes company success, attraction and retention.” It took approximately seven years to develop the infrastructure, secure funding, and renovate the building. The facility, constructed in 1915, is five floors, 25,000 square feet and includes two stories. The YBI opened in 1995 as a mixed incubator providing general services and equipment to start. The YBI is designed as an Edison

Technology Incubator (one of 12 statewide) by the Ohio Department of Development and receives about 50 percent of its operating funds from the ODOD. Since the year 2000 the YBI has created 250 new jobs with an average salary of $58,000. They have developed 24 new commercial software applications. They have customers in 85 different countries with products and support translated in 10 different languages. They won top positions in Inc. Magazines 500 list and Entrepreneur’s growth list. Some customers include Firestone, Lockheed Martin and IBM as well as higher education customers such as Harvard, Yale, Ohio State University and Youngstown State University.

“You need to make parking affordable and give the companies an incentive to build there. Not just tax incentives, but reasons to come, such as education and partnership,” Paradise said. “City officials need to educate people on the city and what it has to offer,” said Paradise. “Stress the idea that Youngstown is a smaller, affordable city that is located between many giant cities. Location is important.” The city needs to build downtown and create the opportunity for jobs. Paradise said, “filling the offices downtown helps bring the business because those workers become the customers that will need the food and the goods that other businesses might bring in.”

New generation A lot of this negativity comes from the fact that Youngstown was a booming steel city until September 19, 1977, “Black Monday,” when Youngstown Sheet and Tube began layoffs and eventually closed. Chief Development Officer at the Youngstown Business Incubator Julie Michael Smith believes that “the steel mills are gone, that’s not our generation. People still throw a pity party over them, get over it.” Many people relied on the steel industry for jobs and when they closed and went away, that reliability never left. People still thought the mills were going to come back one day and save several jobs. With the new generation in the Valley and the new outlook on economy, the steel mills are becoming less popular of talk and becoming more about technology based business such as Turning Technologies, M7 Technologies, and Eris Medical Technologies or even the smaller locally owned businesses that pop up in downtown Youngstown or throughout the Valley. “There is a new generation, new enthusiasm and new future,” Smith went on to say. When you look at Akron, they have the sense of Community that Mayor Jay Williams is looking to model his city after. “The mayor of Akron is someone I am close friends with and look to as a mentor for the city of Youngstown and out community,” said Mayor Williams. “There will be bumps in the road, but they are nothing that we cant overcome. The city has taken a hard knock, but the future is bright and myself as well as the new generation of young people can help us grow as a community by bringing their business here.” “Rolling Stone’s article could be based around anything. For that one negative thing, there are twelve positive about the area,” said Williams. “It’s like if you Google Youngstown 2010, for ever one bad story you will find ten good ones, at least.” Officials are working on making the negative stigma less of an issue and not as overpowering as it once was a few years ago. Mayor Williams is working to make the city a better place for business by cleaning up the city and adding more officers to the streets and making things more cost effective. Creating a “Green City” by going with the eco-friendly ideas and giving the younger generation the credit. “Youngstown can be a place where the new generation can live, learn, and play,” said Williams.

Keeping it in the community A local doctor in Warren, Dr. Giorgio Vescera, grew up in Warren and Howland and worked at his fathers locally owned restaurant in Warren – Sorrento’s. He worked at Sorrento’s from the time he was 11 years old until he graduated med school. Once graduated from med school he opened his own Pediatrician’s Office in Warren. Starting a new business in a community that he has been a part of for 20 years wasn’t has difficult as he had thought. “I opened the office in July and people just started coming in,” he said. “People new my father and his restaurant and they knew me from working there so long. It was a community of people that I felt close to that brought me most business and than it became word of mouth.” “I think alot of the stigma of how bad the city might be comes from that union mentality which we need to get rid of. The big steel mill jobs are gone so its time we work on starting something new, something fresh,” he mentioned. Generations and time can improve an area. “The youth is going to play a key role in building new communities and making certain cities what they may have once been. They have the ideas, they know what is new,” He said. “Them and myself included never knew the steel mills, so we dont know this drastic change people talk about first hand, but with time we as a new generation can build something just as big.”

Tyler Clark, a local Independent Web Consultant, grew up in Youngstown and went to YSU. He majored in music history while working at the Youngstown Playhouse than later moved to Washington D.C. where he got a job teaching html and java at IBM. He always enjoyed programming he said so it was something he wanted to go back to, a job in music was tough to find. He met his wife here in the Valley while working for IBM, than moved to Tucson, Arizona because there were no opportunities here. “I wanted experience in other parts of the country. I’m not saying there is no experience here, I just wanted to branch out and see what else is out there in different parts of the U.S.,” said Clark. After eight years, he came back to the Valley. “I had a family and it was more affordable to live here,” he said. “Also, this area felt like home, I grew up here and loved the environment and people. It felt like a perfect place to raise my own kids.” Clarks said there are no regrets about moving back. He quit his job and began his own independent web consulting business and branched out working with Centric Studios. “Youngstown is a shrinking city, but it has a bright future,” said Clark. “The media and papers give it that stigma by always reporting on the bad.” “Times will change, and new ideas will come from a new generation, but we have to welcome them into our community and give thema chance,” Clark mentioned.