YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – As he drives around the Mahoning Valley, it’s not difficult for Gregg Strollo to spot buildings his architectural firm helped create.
The list includes Williamson Hall at Youngstown State University, YBI’s Tech Block Building No. 5, hospitals and clinics operated by Mercy Health, and the Davis Family YMCA, to name just a few.
Also among those projects is the Wells Building, a downtown Youngstown property that Strollo Architects redesigned and where the firm’s headquarters is located.
The firm he has headed for about 30 years – which also has an office in Orlando, Fla. – is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.
Arguably one of the most recognized names in local architecture, Strollo very nearly didn’t enter the field, he acknowledges. He had been tempted to not go to college at all because of how much he was earning while working at Youngstown Sheet & Tube’s Brier Hill Works. As an architect, it wasn’t until the 1990s that his pay matched what he was getting at the mill in 1973, he reflects.
His father, Rebell Strollo, who was co-founder of what was then Hanahan-Strollo Architects, expected another son, who had been studying architecture, to join the firm. At the time, Strollo was studying archeology, or “pre-unemployment,” as he describes it. “I wanted to go on digs with Louis S.B. Leakey, and dig up skeletons and Tomb Raider stuff,” he recalls.
Seeing his father’s disappointment when his brother disclosed during the holidays that he had dropped out of architecture school, Strollo said he would “give it a shot” and changed course. He transferred to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture. He started as a draftsman at Hanahan-Strollo in 1976, and joined the firm full time after earning his degree.
Working for his father represented “some of the best years of my life,” he says. He was a “patient and quiet dignity kind of guy” who enjoyed going out into the field and working with the craftsmen. He treated everyone like he or she was the most important person on the job.
“I would describe him as a quintessential architectural professional,” he continues. “He took the attitude that you have two ears and one mouth so you should listen twice as much as you talk.”
Around 1997, Strollo took over as president of the firm, which adopted the Strollo Architects name in 2004.
“It’s a tremendously satisfying profession,” he says.
Changes in Profession
Strollo laments that architects entering the field today are less prepared than when he entered the field. He attributes that to a disconnect between what they are being taught in college and what most practitioners are doing.
Architecture programs often do “a great job at teaching these kids how to design fabulous, dynamic, eye-catching” structures, but the architects they turn out don’t understand construction, he says.
“So we have to teach them software packages that are able to do wall sections and foundations and window details and roof connections and actually how you put a building together,” he says.
Young architects also go out into the field to watch how what they’ve drawn is built. It gives them a better practical understanding of how their designs are realized.
Healthcare Specialty
Over the years, healthcare projects became an area of expertise for Strollo Architects, at one point representing perhaps 70% of the firm’s business, Strollo says. In the early 1970s, the firm dabbled in some smaller projects in the sector before what is now known as Mercy Health – St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital engaged the firm for a large addition.
That project “got our foot in the door in healthcare,” he says. That led to projects at Northside and Southside medical centers, as well as hospitals in Ashtabula and Meadville, Pa., among other healthcare providers. With many of the decisions on local healthcare centers no longer being made locally because ownership is no longer based here, healthcare now represents perhaps a quarter of the firm’s business.
Today Strollo Architects’ business includes work in the fitness and wellness spaces, education and senior living. “We’re still involved very much in healthcare. It’s just some of it’s not tertiary care,” he remarks.
Among the projects he is proudest of is another Mercy Health facility, St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital, built on an approximately 40-acre site now occupied by a several-hundred bed primary care hospital, emergency department, cancer care center, physicians office building and a YMCA. “It’s a regular campus out there that has really made a difference in the delivery of healthcare in this region,” he says.
The firm has been involved in several challenging projects over the years, he acknowledges. Probably the most challenging was adding 200 beds to a jail in Wayne County. That project required moving the existing population from the out-of-code building into the newly constructed jail, and retrofitting the existing jail to accommodate a more dormitory-like setting that is safer for both prisoners and staff.
“The philosophy now in jails is more direct supervision, where we have observation posts that have full vision into the pods that the prisoners are in, so that you have eyes on everybody all the time,” he explains. “People act differently when they know they’re being seen, so the incident rates come way down, and the violence comes way down, and it’s a more civilized environment.”
Defense Hub
Among the firm’s current challenges is getting the new Youngstown Innovation Hub for Aerospace & Defense completed under budget, he says. Strollo Architects is the project architect for the renovation of the former Vindicator Printing Co. building, 107 Vindicator Square, to create 130,000 square feet of advanced manufacturing space following the $32.7 million renovation.
The experience is similar to when Strollo Architects took on the Wells Building, he says, “opening up an old building and finding some things we weren’t really expecting.”
The decision to renovate the Wells Building, which was built in 1917, to accommodate the firm’s headquarters and a dozen apartments, came from what Strollo quips was “a weak moment.” It also was influenced by his involvement in various organizations focused on promoting and redeveloping downtown, beginning with the Youngstown Board of Trade, which later became Youngstown Revitalization Foundation and Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp.
“I kind of felt like, you know, put your money where your mouth is,” he reflects
Though the project cost about $1.9 million more than the initial $3.3 million estimate, “which tells you what happens when you dive into old buildings,” he doesn’t regret the decision.
“It’s been good for this little part of downtown, and it’s an oasis here,” he says. “It’s a stable property, which we need more of.”
Community Involvement
Strollo has been involved with several community organizations over the years, something his father instilled in him and which he has attempted to encourage in his own employees. His father told him he had to do his part in making the community a better place.
The elder Strollo also said that the only way to be successful was for people to trust him, and the way they do that is by getting to know him – “and if you’re going to deliver when you say you’re going to do something,” he says. He encourages his employees to similarly participate, including by allowing them to take time away from the office.
In addition to the downtown development groups, organizations he has been associated with include the YMCA of Youngstown, an association that is particularly important to him and whose board he joined in 1983, Better Business Bureau, Goodwill and Community Corrections Association, among others.
“I found myself on lots of boards of directors,” he continues. “The list is long, but without getting out there and getting involved in the things that are going on in your community, I don’t know how you can be trusted with their work.”
Strollo has been “a huge supporter” of the YMCA of Youngstown, CEO Beth Scheller, who has been involved with the organization for 23 years, affirms. His involvement has included discussions about an expansion to Austintown that had been considered about a decade ago as well as potentially going back into Trumbull County, which no longer has a chapter and is now part of the Youngstown organization’s territory.
“He is very wise, and he is very diplomatic, and he can say hard things, but in a way that isn’t offensive,” Scheller says. “He always brings a different viewpoint to the table that maybe some people aren’t thinking about. He’s very kind in his leadership with the Y.”
He also “brings the perspective of an architect,” which is useful when dealing with a building as old as the YMCA’s downtown Youngstown branch. “He’s always helping us to try to find solutions that are going to be affordable,” she says.
Strollo’s interest in collaboration isn’t confined to his work with nonprofit organizations. A few years back, his firm joined with BSHM Architects in Youngstown and Phillips|Sekanick Architects in Warren to form Axiom Architects to compete for larger and more complex building projects across the region.
Role Models
Beyond his father, one of the individuals he looked to as role models in his field was architect Chuck Schafer, who designed Boardman’s Field of Dreams baseball complex. “He was a very practical architect and really kind of put you in your place if you got a little crazy with your thinking,” he says.
Someone else who “really committed his heart and soul” to building the Mahoning Valley was the late William G. Lyden Jr., president of the Lyden Oil Co. Strollo recalls once overhearing Lyden loudly admonish someone. Afterward, the individual told Strollo that Lyden had asked him why a particular action had been taken, and he had responded that it was the way it had always been done. Lyden had responded that that wasn’t an answer,and said to think about the best way to do it and do it that way.
“And he’s right. ‘That’s the way you’ve always done it’ is not a good reason to do anything,” Strollo concurs.
Strollo describes his own leadership philosophy as laissez-faire. While other employers have time clocks and set hours, employees at his firm are given tasks and expected to maintain schedules to accomplish them.
“I don’t care if you come in at 10 in the morning,” he says. “If you have your work under control and you get it done by 5 at night, great. If you have to stay till 7 or 8, fine.”
To develop and recruit talent, firm professionals will participate in mentorship days at high schools and sometimes even grade schools to identify students who have an interest in architecture, Strollo says. The firm provides internships in the hope that the interns can be encouraged to return here to work after graduation, and sometimes channel work to them if they have free time during the academic year.
“The history of this town means a lot to me. I was born and raised here, haven’t left, and I rail at those that feel that you have to go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Columbus or Austin, Texas, or somewhere to get architectural services when we go to some significant links to recruit and equip and train the best and brightest kids we can find – a lot of them from this region,” he remarks.
Industry Designation
Earlier this year, Strollo Architects was designated as an early professional friendly firm by AIA Ohio, a society of the American Institute of Architects, according to Denise Holt, a project architect with the firm.
“I’d say most of our recent talent in the last two or three years has been more of that sort of younger generation,” Holt remarks.
Holt and Summer Barker, another project architect at Strollo, both interned at the firm when they were in college years ago.
Strollo has “very good business development skills” and is “definitely a people person,” Barker says, Few businesses have “grown and thrived through all the ups and downs” of the past 70 years, but the company has always been able to make an impact in the Valley.
“He tries to be very fair with all of us,” Holt adds.
There are few segments of the Valley that the firm hasn’t touched. “He’s worked on healthcare, He’s worked on the jails. He’s worked on the business incubator,” she says.
“A lot of our projects are pretty high profile, and I think they make a difference in the fabric of our community,” Strollo says.
Pictured at top: Gregg Strollo has led Strollo Architects for about 30 years as the firm celebrates its 70th anniversary.
