Fat, dumb and happy has burned us before; resist it now
Good headlines in The Vindicator are as plentiful as the snow these days.
GM will have a significant announcement Tuesday at its Lordstown plant.
V&M Star Steel delivered a new $650 million plant and 350 jobs.
A San Francisco tech company, Revere Data, will open for business in the Youngstown Business Incubator — 10 jobs at first, and possibly 100 in the coming year.
In January, Severstal announced plans to fire up operations that idled workers in 2008 and again in 2009.
VXI Global Solutions established itself this past fall at 20 Federal Place downtown with 250 jobs by year’s end, and 100 more targeted for this year. Down the road, 150 additional jobs are possible.
Entrepreneur magazine ranked Youngstown as one of the Top 10 cities in the nation to start a business, and Site Selection magazine named it as one of the Top 10 mid-sized metro areas for business expansion.
So, we did it.
We’re on our way.
The job’s done.
Well ... I’d like to borrow from the great literary and cinematic treasure that is, yes, “The Breakfast Club,” and suggest “Not ... even ... close, bud.”
What a lot of sports teams learn, or even sports champs like Kelly Pavlik, is that it’s one thing to climb to the top. It’s a whole new challenge to stay there.
So in looking at the roll we’re on in the Valley, it’s important to not rest a bit, and if anything, use these successes to secure others.
One key factor that many experts point to in the economic demise of the Valley three decades ago was not just the collapse of steel. Our true demise was our singular reliance — for decades — on steel.
When we were fat, dumb and happy, as one colleague stated; we rested when instead we needed to cash in even more.
Not only did we do it once with steel, we did it again with cars.
That industry tallied about 22,000 jobs for us in the 1980s.
Now? Eh — 4,000?
So we have a spark right now. We need a bonfire.
That will first and foremost need to come from the civic and political leaders.
Youngstown and Girard governments worked hard to make V&M happen, and brought in other partners.
Youngstown helped in costs for VXI’s relocation.
For Revere, state and federal funds have helped make YBI a thriving place to lure such a California group.
The money has been staggering, especially through the lens of a depressed, impoverished area:
The city gave VXI a $400,000 grant using federal stimulus money to help with the renovations.
The latest YBI building, the Semple Building next to Home Savings and Loan offices, required $2.75 million from the state and an additional $248,000 from the federal government.
The Taft Technology Center acquired nearly $6 million from four state and federal grants.
Smaller programs within the YBI have utilized Ohio’s Third Frontier funding to the tune of nearly $3 million.
Jim Cossler, YBI director and self-proclaimed “chief evangelist,” said the money’s been good.
But more is needed.
He said there is a race for space on within the group, and they need more funding for more brick and mortar. They also need more operational funds (they get about $600,000 per year from the state) to provide vital as-needed consulting services for these startup companies.
Some will question the investment, and wonder why aren’t these companies just out on their own — like other businesses.
That’s fair. But it also borrows from the “steel sustains us” mindset of the 1960s and the “cars sustain us” mindset of the 1980s.
With the above tax dollar investments, the Valley has or is about to have 1,200 jobs it did not have in 2007.
In Youngstown, those jobs will pay income tax. And in downtown, the jobs fuel restaurants and service industries.
But most importantly, those 1,200 jobs say to the world “It can happen here.”
Others will choose to look here. Cossler predicts as many as three more Revere Data-type successes this year.
Cossler said people laughed at him years ago. Truth be told, some still do now. But ....
So these are our recent headlines. Here are headlines from elsewhere just this week:
In Britain, an American firm launched a plan to bring 500 jobs there for the wind turbine industry.
Ironically, a French company also in the wind turbine industry will create 200 jobs in Milwaukee.
In Poland (the country, of course), General Motors is adding 700 jobs by mid-2010.
Caterpillar is bringing back 600 workers in Peoria, Ill.
Other headlines this week were not so good.
Elkhart, Ind., will add 225 workers to unemployment when a factory closes May 1.
Nearly 7,000 workers will be jobless in Fremont, Calif., when a Toyota plant closes March 31.
The Valley has seen all of these headlines before.
It takes hard work and continuous reinvestment to create only the best ones.