Sunday, November 20, 2011
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
With half of the initial funding gone to operate the economic-development office of the Western Reserve Port Authority, officials say prospects for the future of the office look bright.
“The board as a whole supports her, and the funding partners are pleased as well,” said Scott Lynn, port authority chairman, talking about Rose Ann DeLeon, hired two years ago at $155,000 per year plus benefits to bring a full-time economic development focus to the port authority. The authority also runs the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
The funding partners are the cities of Youngstown, Warren and Niles, commissioners of Mahoning and Trumbull counties, plus Howland Township and the Western Reserve Building Trades Council. Together they are contributing $375,000 per year for three years. The money will be sufficient to keep the economic development team running for two more years — a total of four, DeLeon said last week.
But are the partners happy enough with DeLeon’s work so far to approve additional funding in two years?
Lynn and DeLeon say they think the answer is yes, and they believe the addition of veteran Mahoning County grant writer Sarah Lown is only likely to improve those chances.
Ralph Infante, mayor of Niles, which agreed to contribute $50,000 to the effort, said the city is happy with the work DeLeon’s office has done, but he doesn’t know if Niles has the money to continue to contribute in the future.
Infante said the city is placing hope in a new joint economic-development plan with Weathersfield Township for remediation of industrial land on the west side of state Route 169 near North Road and hopes the port authority’s work on brownfield remediation will help make that happen.
Infante said he’s a big supporter of the work of the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative to help promote development and redevelopment of the nine cities along the river, including Niles.
Lown has worked on brownfield remediation — the cleaning of former industrial sites — since 1999, when she worked on a contract basis with the city of Youngstown while associated with Youngstown State University’s Center for Urban Studies.
During that time, the city was awarded a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to do planning and assessment of brownfield sites in Youngstown, Campbell and Struthers.
Over the years, Lown has secured grant money from the state’s Clean Ohio grant program so that Valley sites could be cleaned up.
Examples are the CASTLO Industrial Park in Struthers, the YBM site on Logan Avenue in Youngstown, the Wean Building near the Market Street Bridge in Youngstown, and the Dempsey Steel site along U.S. Route 422 near V&M Star.
Lown has worked on about 25 brownfield projects since 1999, securing about $20 million in grants.
Her work on brownfields continued during four years with the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, where she secured grants to conduct an inventory of brownfield sites in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, which helped prompt the formation of the Mahoning River Corridor project.
A big part of Lown’s new job will be to complete an application to the U.S. EPA due Nov. 30 that, if secured, would enable the port authority to produce an inventory and assessments of various brownfield sites in Trumbull County.
While considerable progress has been made to reuse former industrial sites in Mahoning County, less progress has been made in Trumbull, Lown said.
The grant would focus “just on Trumbull County to catch up,” Lown said, adding that Trumbull County has “really gotten hit hard” since the recession of 2008 began.
Lown said she’s excited by the prospect of going to work on areas such as the Golden Triangle area of Howland and the city of Warren, where many former booming industrial sites now sit idle.
She’s excited because the sites are ideal areas for what some call the “new urbanization” — areas where residential, commercial, industrial purposes converge.
“The new generation want to know they can walk and ride a bike to work, and all the amenities are in a walking distance,” said Lown.
The many brownfield sites in the Golden Triangle and elsewhere in Trumbull County might be ideal for that because residential and commercial areas are positioned so close to the former industrial sites, she said.
An example might be the former Packard Electric buildings on Dana and Griswold streets in Warren, which have a bike path running through them, as well as residential and commercial activity close by.
Trish Nuskievicz, assistant director of the Trumbull County Planning Commission, said she’s also pleased to have Lown on board full time to address brownfield issues, because Trumbull County has needed it for 10 years.
“Sarah’s been involved in brownfields for a lot of years and has a good track record. We’re lucky to get someone of her caliber,” Nuskievicz said.
“I think this could have one of the greater economic impacts on this area,” she said.
The port authority already has applied for a second grant through the Ohio Department of Development that would provide up to $50,000 to study brownfields along the part of the U.S. Route 422 corridor in Girard and Youngstown.
Lown worked for Eastgate from 2004 to 2008 and was grants manager for the Mahoning County commissioners from 2001 to 2004.
She worked for Youngstown for two years, mostly on the Joint Economic Development District proposal the city wanted to have with Austintown and Boardman to have workers in those communities pay an income tax to Youngstown if their company used Youngstown water.
Don Hanni III, a port authority board member, questioned Lown’s hiring at last week’s port authority meeting, wanting to know why no search was done and why she’s being paid $65,000.
DeLeon said she has been working with the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative for many months and has asked a variety of people for referrals for the brownfields position she wanted to fill.
“The name that came up over and over was Sarah,” DeLeon said, adding that she arrived at the salary for the job after talking with port authorities throughout the state.
“She became available just when there was a need,” DeLeon said.
Lown, a Youngstown resident, works out of DeLeon’s office in the Youngstown Business Incubator on West Federal Street.
Attempts to reach officials in the cities of Youngstown and Warren, and the Mahoning County commissioners’ office for this story were unsuccessful.
Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda said the word he gets from fellow Commissioner Paul Heltzel is that Trumbull and Mahoning counties are “making progress” under DeLeon.