43
Data company’s relocation to downtown brings cheers
The research center’s CEO wants to hire as many as 100 employees in two years.
Photo
NEW COMPANY: Kevin O’Brien, chief executive officer of Revere Data, announces his company is relocating a research center’s operations from India to downtown Youngstown. Congressman Tim Ryan is at the left.
Photo
NEW COMPANY: Kevin O’Brien, chief executive officer of Revere Data, announces his company is relocating a research center’s operations from India to downtown Youngstown.
YOUNGSTOWN — Just a day after the announcement of a $650 million V&M Star Steel expansion, Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan welcomed a research company to the city’s downtown Tuesday.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Ryan, of Niles, D-17th. “This is just the beginning of marketing our Valley as a great place for business.”
Revere Data, a San Francisco-based company, has relocated a research center’s operations from New Delhi, India, to the recently renovated Semple Building on West Federal Street, part of the city’s Tech Block.
Revere Data’s facility will open shortly with 10 workers, said Kevin E. O’Brien, its chief executive officer. That number could increase to 100 in two years, he said.
The company provides information on companies to institutional investors, such as large banks and hedge funds, as well as major businesses including Google, O’Brien said.
The company is leasing about 1,800 square feet at the Semple Building with an option for another 1,800 square feet as it increases its employment, O’Brien said.
O’Brien praised the Mahoning Valley’s “high-quality labor and world-class universities nearby,” as well as the area’s “business and tax-friendly environment and the ability to offer great quality of life for our employees and their families in Northeast Ohio.”
Williams made a point to repeat O’Brien’s statements.
“These are so many of the things the critics and naysayers say we lack,” he said.
O’Brien said the company learned about Youngstown from Brian Hill, Revere Data’s director of research, who is from Ashtabula. His parents live in the Mahoning Valley.
“There are high-quality workers here,” O’Brien said. “We want to bring other sectors — customer support and product management — to Youngstown.”
About $1.8 million in state and federal funds were used to renovate the three-story Semple Building, located between the Taft Technology Center and Home Savings and Loan Co. on West Federal Street.
The 25,000-square-foot facility is about 70 percent occupied, said Julie Michael Smith, chief development officer at the Youngstown Business Incubator, which oversees not only the incubator, but also the Taft Technology Center and Semple.
Tuesday’s announcement by Revere Data comes one day after V&M Star Steel officials said it would invest $650 million in an expansion plant next to its current location on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Youngstown on the Girard line.
Williams and Ryan said the two announcements show the diversity of businesses coming to Youngstown and that they are keys to the area’s economic revival.
skolnick@vindy.com