YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – In 1986, when John Moliterno became president of what is now the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, the organization didn’t include an economic development function. That changed under his management.
“I had worked my way through the process with Youngstown Sheet & Tube and some of those other entities and we knew we needed job creation in this Valley. And we needed to work at it,” Moliterno says. “We didn’t have to back in the 1960s. It was easy then. The jobs were here.”
Moliterno joined the chamber when he was 23 as the director of governmental affairs. He later became president of the Better Business Bureau, then returned to the chamber as its president.
Now retired, he oversaw the merging of the chambers in Youngstown, Warren and Niles into what is now the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
“When I ran the Better Business Bureau, it was the Youngstown Better Business Bureau,” Moliterno says. “And I regionalized that entity and it became what it is today, [to comprise] Mahoning Trumbull Columbiana counties. When I went to the chamber, the original thought was, we’d like to do the same thing. But it took probably three, four years before we started that process, which was much more of a process.”
And it wasn’t easy.
“Each of the three chambers had their own boards,” he says. “They had their own executive directors. Once they asked me to run the chamber, my next job was, how do you handle the other two presidents of chambers…”
Moliterno, who later served as executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority, hopes to see more regionalization in the Mahoning Valley. “I’ve been a big believer of regionalism for a long time,” he says, and the idea was that government would follow suit. “But it’s never really done that,” he says. “It was very hard to get the entities – whether it’s counties, or townships or cities – to work together.”
The Western Reserve Port Authority has made headway in getting governmental entities to collaborate with its council of mayors and regular meetings with elected officials, Moliterno says. There’s more talk among those entities about how to work together.
He believes the Valley has grown up a lot over the last 40 years. He supports the repopulation initiative by the Regional Chamber and Eastgate Regional Council of Governments to retain young people in the area, return people who have relocated elsewhere and receive newcomers.
“It’s very important to sell what we have, which is a great cost of living,” Moliterno says. “This is a great place to raise your family and do it economically and still have access to all the major markets. And again, I’m a chamber of commerce guy.”
Pictured at top: John Moliterno in 1986, newly installed at the chamber.