43
Williams: This date will live in history
Photo
NEGOTIATIONS OVER: From left, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams and Girard Mayor James Melfi show a site plan for a 191-acre site along the Youngstown/Girard border that could be the location of a $970 million V&M Star Steel expansion. It took the two cities weeks to work out an agreement to annex the property, located in Girard, to Youngstown to clear the way for the project.
Ancillary businesses serving V&M could crop up if the project proceeds.
By Harold Gwin
YOUNGSTOWN — Sept. 19, 1977, or “Black Monday” as it came to be known, may be remembered as the day that began the economic decline of this community, but its regeneration will have Oct. 14, 2009, as the date to remember, said Mayor Jay Williams.
“This date will certainly live in history,” he said, moments before officials from Youngstown and Girard, gathered at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce offices, signed an agreement Wednesday clearing the way for a possible $1 billion industrial development project.
“It is a grand day in our valley’s history,” said Mayor James Melfi of Girard, suggesting the deal between the two cities is “a unique agreement,” one of its kind.
The 1977 date was when Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced that its Campbell Works would close, signaling the rapid demise of the local steel industry and the loss of thousands of jobs.
The arrangement signed Wednesday will impact both cites and the entire Mahoning Valley, Williams predicted. Both he and Melfi said ancillary businesses serving the steel company should develop along the U.S. Route 422 corridor.
The deal clears the way for V&M Star Steel to build a $970 million expansion of its Youngstown operations that would employ about 400 people, should the company decide to build here.
Thomas Humphries, president and CEO of the Regional Chamber, said Youngstown is on the company’s very short list of possible sites (Others are reported to be Houston and Brazil.), and that V&M President Roger Lindgren is interested in the location, even flying here from Houston at one point to sit in on negotiations between Girard and Youngstown as they worked out the terms of the Cooperative/Joint Economic Development Zone Agreement.
Lindgren didn’t attend the signing ceremony, and the company has offered no comment on the agreement.
Girard and Youngstown officials have said the company has indicated it will make a decision on a building site by the end of this year.
Work is expected to begin within the next two weeks on preparing the site for construction, a task expected to cost about $20 million with most of that coming from federal stimulus funds.
Should V&M decide to build elsewhere or cancel the project, the 191-acre location will still be a prepared industrial park site shared by Girard and Youngstown, Williams said.
The community needs to focus more on its metal industry, Humphries said, suggesting that that goes beyond steel.
The region has the second or third-largest concentration of aluminum extrusion producers in the United States, he said, and RTI Titanium is spending millions on upgrading its titanium operations. That company spent $30 million last year to upgrade its Weathersfield Township titanium mill.
This is a metal center, Humphries said, and the V&M Star deal can be used as a marketing tool for the area.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, helped facilitate negotiations between the two cities and stressed the importance of the V&M project to the local economy.
The community is finally starting to get some positive global press attention, and this deal communicates to the world that anyone can come here and do business, he said. V&M Star is owned by Vallourec, a company based in France.
Ryan called the agreement the “beginning of a new era.”
Williams said V&M Star insisted that any expansion here be done on land located in Youngstown, prompting the start of negotiations between the two cities to allow Youngstown to annex 191 acres of land that it purchased in Girard adjacent to V&M’s operations on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
That annexation is covered in the agreement but also must be approved by both the Mahoning and Trumbull County commissioners.
The infrastructure work on the site will provide as many as 500 temporary construction jobs that will produce an estimated one-time income-tax benefit of $3 million for Girard and $2.5 million for Youngstown.
If V&M builds here, the two cities would split evenly all corporate profit taxes paid once the tax amount surpasses the $3.85 million mark.
They also would split the income tax from the new employees, which could produce between $500,000 and $1 million annually for each municipality.
The land will remain part of the Girard school district, which could see a real-estate tax increase between $1 million and $1.2 million annually if the project is built.
Williams said some of that project expansion actually will occur on V&M’s present property in Youngstown, and the Youngstown city schools would benefit from any increase in real-estate taxes such improvements would generate.
gwin@vindy.com