YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A decade before the collapse of the steel industry in the region, leaders of the Black community in Youngstown and their supporters spearheaded the effort to create an organization designed to secure opportunity and financial backing for small businesses and mostly minority entrepreneurs.
During the late 1960s, funding for these ventures was hard to obtain, says James Glenn, a retired Internal Revenue Service accountant and now a board member of the Youngstown Area Development Corp., or YADC.
“Going back to the 1960s, a Black business could not get a loan,” Glenn, now 95, recalls, alluding to an era of discriminatory practices by lending institutions, developers and other entities. “There was a need to do something for the minority community.”
The answer was YADC, technically the oldest economic development organization still chartered in the Mahoning Valley. Many of the activities of the organization today are relegated to an advisory role – a member has sat on the board of directors at Valley Economic Development Partners, formerly the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp., since the inception of that organization in 1978.
Nevertheless, YADC played an important role in laying a foundation for minority business growth during the critical era of the 1970s and early 1980s as retrenchment of the steel industry in the region took hold.
“Up until about five or six years ago, we were quite active,” Glenn says. “I don’t know of any minority business going back to the 1970s that we didn’t have some impact on.”
The corporation was organized in 1968 by founding members the late Hon. Nathanial Jones, a longtime civil rights activist who by that time had already served as assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and later served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and J. Ronald Pittman, a former director of community development for the city of Youngstown. The pair called together 10 Black labor, business and professional leaders who together drafted a statement of purpose to form YADC.
The organization was officially chartered by the state of Ohio in October 1969. That same year, YADC received an initial grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to aid minority entrepreneurs. These grants continued annually until 1972, when YADC received grant authority to expand its small-business assistance throughout Mahoning and Trumbull counties, Glenn says. The state of Ohio also contributed to the nonprofit, while the organization won development contracts with the city of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
Throughout its existence, the organization helped minority startups with financing and business assistance services, Glenn says. “It’s hard to say how many businesses we helped. There have been hundreds.”
These businesses ranged from barbershops, restaurants, construction companies, HVAC contractors, flower shops, funeral services, moving companies, and a host of others, Glenn says.
At one point, Glenn says, YADC employed eight people who engaged in business counseling, tax preparation, and other specialties to help small businesses of all kinds, although most were minority owned.
YADC staff was on hand to help clients with business plans, location, equipment purchases, credit issues, and other matters, Glenn adds. “We’d do a complete analysis of the individual in order to secure capital,” he says. “We’d help them prepare a loan application, financial statements, balance sheets, P&L [profit and loss] statements to take to the bank.”
Clients could also receive help with tax issues as their operations began and were provided with entrepreneurial training programs. “We would work with some clients for more than a year.” Glenn says.
Many of those businesses still thrive in the Mahoning Valley. Goldies Flower Shop, for example, received some help during the 1970s from YADC, says owner George Williams, whose parents established the business in 1952.
“They actually rented office space in my mom and dad’s building,” Williams says, at 1552 Belmont Ave. He’s not clear precisely as to how YADC supported the business before he took over the shop but witnessed the effect the organization had on the community. “In retrospect, it was all positive and helpful, without a doubt,” he says.
Businessman Herb Washington, Glenn relates, sought help from YADC when he first launched his McDonald’s restaurant franchises in the Mahoning Valley during the 1990s. Washington and his son have since successfully expanded into the emerging cannabis industry.
Other initiatives the organization supported include affordable housing developments such as the Plaza View apartments on the city’s East Side and Plaza View III, an apartment complex for the elderly and disabled in Warren, Glenn says. These housing developments today are managed by Youngstown Community Housing, a for-profit real estate management company that works out of the same building as YADC at 2123 Belmont Ave. in Youngstown. Youngstown Community Housing bought the building in 1993 and YADC relocated there the following year.
Over the years, the YADC Board of Trustees has sported a masthead of some of the most influential business, civic and professional leaders in the community, Glenn says. Among them were Judge Jones; Pittman; Lehman E. Black of L.E. Black Funeral Home – today L.E. Black Phillips & Holden Funeral Home; Dr. Ernest Perry; Abe Harshman; Dr. Henry Ellison; and attorney Floyd Haynes. YADC former executive director Alice Lev was honored several times by federal and state agencies for her efforts to improve business and entrepreneurial activity in the minority community.
In 1993, William Carter assumed the role of executive director and retired in 2017. Today, Lynette Sutton, also a former IRS accountant, serves as the organization’s CEO and secretary.
Sutton says the YADC role today is to provide support and advisory services to the board of the Valley Economic Development Partners. “We’ll continue to support Valley Partners,” she says.
In many ways, Glenn says, YADC was the forerunner of Valley Partners – securing SBA loans, bank partnerships and other sources of financing for startups. Glenn, a longtime board member of what was then MVEDC and served as its treasurer for 30 years, says Valley Partners has stepped up and now helps hundreds of businesses throughout the region. “They’ve done a great job,” he says.
Although YADC has stepped away from its role as an active lending and training force, Glenn says its structure and accomplishments helped to pave the way for successful efforts such as Valley Partners.
“We’ve stepped back from the most part,” he says, reflecting on YADC’s early efforts. “There was such a need then.”
Pictured at top: Jim Glenn sits on the Youngstown Area Development Corp. board. Lynette Sutton is the agency’s CEO.