MAHONING VALLEY Officials try to strategize over Boeing

Think regionally about economic development, a YSU expert says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
HOWLAND -- The site selection process for a Boeing plant will be kept a closely guarded secret, a Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber official told a meeting of local government and economic development officials here.
"They are not going to publicly tell you whether or not you've made the short list. They won't tell you when you're no longer being considered. They'll make an announcement when they have a site," Reid Dulberger, executive vice president of the chamber, said Tuesday.
"It seems to be a pretty closed process. There seems to be a pretty high wall around this project."
The occasion was a brainstorming session in the Howland Township administration building on methods of attracting a Boeing plant and other businesses to the Mahoning Valley.
Some 30 sites in 15 states are believed by the chamber to have submitted applications to be the location for the new Boeing plant, Dulberger said.
It appears Boeing is "looking to isolate a small number of sites that meet some rather extraordinary criteria," he said. Once that happens, the airplane manufacturer likely "will get very serious very quickly with a small number of folks and then start talking about the deal," he predicted.
Best approach
"It's not clear to us that anything we can do right now is going to have much of an impact on Boeing or their consultant," he said.
"Certain things might hurt," he added, urging local residents not to do anything to upset Boeing, such as marching on its Chicago headquarters.
In the case of bringing production of General Motors' new small car to Lordstown, Barbara Ewing, a former chamber employee and now an aide to U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, noted that GM labor and management urged the chamber to focus the "Bring It Home" campaign at the local level.
"Both management and labor felt that any campaign directed at GM headquarters would be devastating to the process," she recalled.
Darlene St. George, Howland Township administrator, said local officials will rely on state officials, local legislators and the chamber to assemble an incentive package for Boeing.
"We should be prepared to make that sell for our community," before making Boeing's short list, she said.
What's recommended
It's important to think regionally about economic development, said Hunter Morrison, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at Youngstown State University.
"Really, the region that we're dealing with from an economic perspective is Northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania," as far as Boeing and other national and international companies are concerned, he explained.
"In this part of the world, we've grown up in a very parochial set of communities and neighborhoods and interests, and the rest of the world doesn't understand those differences," he said.
"The Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is a regional asset as well as a challenge to the two counties that have to pay the bill," to operate it, he said, referring to the airport area as a potential site for Boeing. The airport receives funds from Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
"It's important to be able to tell your story," and promote the area's assets, including Lake Erie ports and the "remarkable freeway network" leading from them, and Kent and Youngstown State universities, he said.
"It's a process of thinking more broadly about who the 'us' is, and then how do we present that," he said.
"Part of the things that you have to sell as a place is an affordable, accessible quality of life," he observed.
milliken@vindy.com