Valley must work to duplicate economic development gains

What a refreshingly uplifting week it has been on the economic development front in the Mahoning Valley. Those all-so-familiar reports of company closings, layoffs and cutbacks have been replaced with news of company openings, expansions and other capital investments protecting thousands of jobs and creating hundreds of others in the Valley.
Such success demonstrates that the region need not remain stuck in the muck of economic retrenchment. The factors that contributed to the past week's achievements must be identified, harnessed and duplicated to generate more of the same revitalization the region so desperately needs.
String of optimistic developments
Consider the chain of upbeat economic developments:
U Leedsworld -- a supplier and producer of promotional products such as portfolios, pens and stationery -- will locate and expand its operations in Warren, creating nearly 500 jobs over the next several years, company officials announced last week.
U Wal-Mart has confirmed it plans to build and open a super center in the Liberty Plaza, a move that should create hundreds of jobs.
U West Corporation, a call center in Niles, is adding 200 jobs to its payroll in an expansion that will bring total employment at the two-year-old facility to 1,200.
U WCI Steel of Warren plans to spend $29.3 million on equipment to meet new pollution standards. That is part of a $125 million investment over the next four years to upgrade the mill. The projects should serve to protect the 1,450 jobs at the Mahoning Valley's largest steel producer, which emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year.
U RMI Titanium in Weathersfield Township plans an $8 million investment in melting furnaces at its plant. Company officials expect jobs to be created from the investment.
Clearly, the benefits from these successes abound. Communities benefit from increased tax revenue and the removal of vacant and sometimes blighted properties. Lower unemployment upstarts the local consumer and retail economy. Development, such as that of Wal-Mart in Liberty, tends to attract other development that creates broader- based revitalization and healthier communities.
Not all is rosy
Yet despite these recent jobs and development gains, Valley residents cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing economic angst affecting workers at some of the region's premiere employers, including General Motors, Delphi Packard Electric and Forum Health.
Workers at those and other Valley enterprises face an uncertain future as companies undergo downsizing to cope with red ink and other unfortunate economic realities, such as foreign competition and rising health-care costs. Creative solutions, cooperation and compromise between management and labor should help soften any blows.
At the GM Lordstown complex, for example, about 1,500 of 5,300 hourly workers have signed up for buyouts, meaning far fewer workers than originally expected will be idled when the midnight shift is eliminated later this summer at the car plant.
Indeed the downsizing of GM, Delphi and other major employers in the Valley makes the need to broaden and diversify our economic base all the more imperative. Leaders must recognize and capitalize upon the ingredients that made the most recent successes realities: strong public and private partnerships complete with competitive tax incentives; dogged persistence and hard work by those courting new companies; and promotion of the Mahoning Valley's many assets, including its large work force, its extremely low housing costs, its excellent school systems, its community attractions and its quick and easy access to the large urban centers of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
The volley of positive economic developments over the past week proves that the Valley does have the wherewithal to market itself and to succeed. Development and community leaders must learn from these gains to ensure that such positive economic news becomes the rule, not the exception, in the short- and long-term future of our community.