SALEM, Ohio – The Columbiana County city is on the rise, as evidenced by Site Selection magazine’s Governor’s Cup rankings.
On the list of top 100 micropolitans, Salem climbed from 84th in 2023 to 12th in 2024. And there’s an explanation for the jump.
“It’s the public sector, the private sector coming together, working together, looking for solutions and attacking … problems,” said Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Department of Development.
Julie Needs, executive director of the Sustainable Opportunity Development Center, Salem officials, business leaders and state officials celebrated the city’s economic development success by holding a roundtable discussion with Mihalik at the SOD Center on Friday.
“I’m just absolutely so proud of Salem and Columbiana County and the work that they’re doing to help promote existing business expansions, attract new opportunities here,” Mihalik said. “It just says a lot about the teamwork and collaboration that is taking place. And look – we’re here to be there for it. We want to help celebrate and also be supportive. There is a role for us to play here as well, but the real work is really done on the ground in our localities like Salem.”
Salem’s rise wasn’t without challenges, some of which were discussed during the roundtable. One was the addition of a local third-party building department. In the past, the city and Columbiana County didn’t have a building department, so projects were going through the state’s building department.
Needs said the solution came two years ago, when Salem and Columbiana teamed up to start Elevate Building Solutions, which operates out of the same building as the SOD Center. The village of Leetonia has joined them in the effort.
Instead of having to wait six months for approval, Needs said the average is now six days.
“It’s completely changed the game, and it’s local,” she said.
The building department gives developers like Joe Hovorka, who is working on historic buildings downtown, the opportunity to have someone on-site to make decisions.
“It truly was a game changer,” Needs said. “It took us from hoping to be competitive to being competitive.”
There are nine downtown projects ongoing, and another one just applied for permits, which Needs said is important to bringing in more development downtown. Hovorka said downtown renovations create a vibrancy and help attract those who might want to live and invest in Salem.
“If you talk about sustainable opportunity development, if you talk about making it simpler to do business in a municipality, if you talk about cooperative engagement of state, city and local officials and business, we’re thrilled,” said Brent Patmos, Fresh Mark president and COO. “And we’re thrilled, particularly, that we got the building department into the city. That was particularly helpful in eliminating some of the bureaucracy that really allowed for appropriate fast-tracking of projects that really allowed us to continue to invest.”
Since 2020, Fresh Mark has invested $86.1 million in expanding and improving its plant on South Lincoln Avenue.
“I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Julie [Needs], the mayor and all of our elected officials to get these things done. We love culture, and culture connects with Salem – and that’s why we continue to invest,” Patmos said.
Jock Buta, president and CEO of Butech Bliss, said the community isn’t big enough to have all the support other large cities enjoy. But Salem has the SOD Center and city officials who work together with businesses to make things happen. He said he often uses the SOD Center’s training program and Ohio TechCred assistance to train the employees he needs to operate his plants. Following the roundtable discussion, Buta gave a tour of a recent $8 million investment to expand and add equipment to his company’s location on Pennsylvania Avenue. The expansion allowed him to add more employees, bringing the company’s numbers above the 300 mark.
Ryan Crowell, vice president and CFO of TruCut Inc., which manufactures air conditioning coils and exchangers, said Salem is appealing because of the industrial know-how, especially in tool and dye stamping. With the help of the state, city and the SOD Center, TruCut also has been able to expand.
He also touted partners like the Columbiana County Port Authority and the change from being part of the 18-county Team NEO to the four-county Lake to River Economic Development.
The group talked about challenges in the need to expand the workforce, including retaining population, transportation from the more rural areas of the county, child care for young mothers wanting to return to the workforce and finding workers who can pass a drug test.
Mayor Cyndi Baronzzi Dickey said in talking with other mayors, she learned there are pockets of workers throughout the county who lack transportation. The mayors are “thinking outside the box” about possible transportation solutions, she said.
Dickey said the Salem Resource Recovery Hub got a nearly $389,000 grant from the OneOhio Recovery Foundation at the end of last year to start a resource center to help individuals recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, as well as those with mental health conditions. Salem is partnering with Kent State University, the SOD Center and Flying High Inc. in the effort.
“What I love about what I heard today was that it is not just communication that is taking place, but there is real action after those conversations happen,” Mihalik said. “There’s also a willingness to want to be of assistance to others. So the mayor talked about how she’s meeting with other mayors in the county. They’re trying to attack some of these problems together. What benefits maybe Salem also benefits Columbiana.”
Mihalik, the former mayor of Findlay, another small city on the Micropolitan Top 100 list, said mayors “have a different responsibility and a different understanding of what it takes to move the ball down the field.”
Mihalik said she believes leadership is much more than telling people what to do. It’s showing them what to do, and she believes leaders in Salem and Columbiana County understand that.
“I think that if we just keep working together at this table, those solutions are out there,” Baronzzi Dickey said. “And they will probably be so obvious when we think of them that we will probably say, ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’ Because when somebody tells us in this room, ‘You can’t do it,’ I think, why not?”
Pictured at top: Jock Buta, president and CEO of Butech Bliss, points out new equipment added as part of an $8 million expansion at the company’s location on Pennsylvania Avenue. He gave a tour to Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik, to his right, and other officials as they celebrated Salem’s economic development successes Friday.