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Business diversity helps McClurg Road area fight recession
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
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Everything from food manufacturers, labor union headquarters to ice rinks make up the McClurg Road industrial area. Its business layout could be a lesson to other cities on diversifying and staying local, officials say.
By Robert Guttersohn
BOARDMAN
Dragging a cursor over McClurg and Bev roads on Google Maps reveals an assortment of small industrial and recreational businesses.
The diversity has helped the area weather through the post-industrial storm that has gouged out parts of the Mahoning Valley and left other Rust Belt cities across the Midwest with gaping plots of land.
“That has been a very steady area,” said Anna Mamone, the township’s zoning inspector.
Maps and bird’s-eye-view photos of Boardman line her office walls. “They’re very mixed. Just really small manufacturing [businesses], you know, family owned.”
The 1.5-mile McClurg Road, along with the 2,780-foot Bev Road to the south, first was zoned for industrial use in 1951.
In the 1970s, the zone saw a large increase in industrial businesses that wanted to make the McClurg and Bev roads area home.
“Money was available,” Mamone said of the time. “The housing market was going crazy, and quite a bit of development in Boardman happened then.”
Industries find the area desirable because it sits off the two main roads in Boardman, U.S. Route 224 and Market Street.
Walter Kohowski, operation manager with R.L. Lipton since 2005, said as a distributor, the access to Interstate 680 is beneficial.
“We can get to Warren in 20 minutes,” he said. “It’s a beautiful community, a beautiful street — well-kept, well-maintained.” Family-owned Lipton has distributed Anheuser-Busch products from 491 McClurg for more than 30 years.
“Usually they come and they stay,” Mamone said of the local businesses.
Adding to the mix, nonindustrial businesses have moved to the area. Three labor unions have placed their local chapter headquarters there, too.
The Iron Workers Union Local 207 represents 300 members across the six-county region. Rick Ellis, business manager and iron worker since 1982, said the union sends out workers to contractors and trains up to 50 members at a time in its apprenticeship school next door. They worked on the Ice Zone when it opened in 1997.
“It’s kind of a natural location for sports because there’s plenty of places for parking.” said Skip Mackall, Ice Zone’s general manager. It sits close to the Field of Dreams recreation center and oftentimes shares parking. He called McClurg and Bev roads an easy entrance and easy exit.
“Yet you can get anywhere from here,” Mackall said. “They [customers] actually like it because it is off the main road.”