YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said he wants to sit down with area business leaders to discuss possibilities for the Chill Can property on the East Side, which the city acquired last month.
Though the city has yet to receive the title to the 21-acre site, for which it paid $1.379 million during a Feb. 18 auction, Brown said during the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s Good Morning, Youngstown! breakfast he already has spoken with business owners about the property.
“This is a great opportunity for the city of Youngstown,” Brown said during his State of the City address, which he delivered as part of the chamber event that took place Thursday morning at Stambaugh Auditorium.
In October 2016, California-based M.J. Joseph Development Corp. had announced plans that were never fulfilled to develop a multimillion-dollar manufacturing and research campus for self-chilling beverage cans and other products.
Under a 2017 development agreement, the company had agreed to create 237 jobs by August 2021 and was awarded a $1.5 million development grant. The city also provided assistance with acquiring property for the project.
“If you take public money, you make a public promise. I need a public product, and that product was jobs. And that didn’t happen,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of things that went into this, and I don’t have to go into that. What I want to talk about is what’s next, what’s the future, what’s this opportunity here.”
Brown said he expects the city to have the title to the property within 60 days after last month’s auction. The city needs to assess the condition of the property – which he predicts will be “a catalyst for economic growth” – and make it presentable by this summer.
“The No. 1 priority is that it will benefit the citizens of Youngstown, Ohio, and that’s what I’m going to look forward to doing,” he said.
Downtown Youngstown has endured several challenges in recent years, including the Covid-19 pandemic, road construction projects and the natural gas explosion at Realty Tower last May. “Downtown is now open, and all of that happened because of you in this room,” Brown said.
During his remarks, Brown also discussed the city’s efforts to bring new business to the city and encouraged existing ones to grow though its job creation grant agreement program, which helped Steelite International to locate its global headquarters downtown and Trivium Aluminum Packaging USA Corp. to expand its operations at Performance Place.
Brown also hailed the recent announcement that the state of Ohio would site in the city an innovation hub focusing on aerospace and defense, using $26 million in state funding and $36 million in local, federal and private investment.
“This is an opportunity for our next generations, our children, our grandchildren,” he remarked.
Housing
Additionally, Brown addressed what he described as “the No. 1 issue facing mayors and communities across the nation” – housing. As part of its effort to address that, the city allocated $8 million in American Rescue Plan funds and partnered with 717 Credit Union to administer a program for construction and/or rehabilitation of housing development.
Dorian Smith, senior vice president of business development at 717, said the credit union is “well on [its] way” to disbursing low-interest loans for landlords who are interested in rehabilitating their properties and for homeowners to make façade improvements. In addition, it is preparing to embark on a program to offer low-interest home loans with no application costs and no private mortgage insurance requirement.
“We’re going to be able to offer these individuals an affordable home at a price that they can afford that’s sometimes less than the rent that they’re paying right now,” he said.
Smith also discussed 717’s participation in the Downtown Open event last fall, during which the credit union announced it was buying $1 million in gift cards to support downtown restaurants and giving them to customers who refinance their auto loans through 717.
“That program is well on its way, and we see that the numbers are always increasing with the number of gift cards that we are distributing each month,” he said.
Other Speakers
Other featured speakers during Thursday’s program included Youngstown Schools Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor; Paul Garchar, CEO of Potential Development School for Autism; and Mike Latessa, executive director of the Rich Center for Autism at Youngstown State University.
Batchelor highlighted various district achievements, including five-star ratings for Youngstown Rayen Early College High School and Choffin Career & Technical Center. “Only urban career tech center that is five star,” he said. The district also is “working to change the culture” in terms of behavior in the schools.
“Teachers have to be free to teach; students have to be free to learn,” he said.
In addition, the district is surveying the community to identify “the top seven durable skills and competencies you believe that our students need to have to be successful,” he said.
Garchar and Latessa shared the stage to discuss the work their organizations do ahead of Autism Awareness Month in April.
With a diagnosis rate of 1 in 36 currently, it is likely that an employer has someone on the autism spectrum or has an employee with a child on the spectrum, Latessa said.
Garchar pointed to the “vast array of services” available locally to people affected by Autism, including the Rich Center and Potential Development, as well as residential programs such as Dylan’s House and workforce development programs.
Pictured at top: Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown speaks during Thursday’s event.