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Mahoning Lumber to celebrate 75 years
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Construction project manager Bill Rounds, of Iowa-based Pinnacle Construction Inc., has never met Bill Gerson, but he still thinks the world of him.
“He will ... do anything for you,” Rounds said.
Quality service and dedication are just a couple of reasons attributed to Gerson’s success with his company, Mahoning Lumber, which provides products to construction companies for shopping-mall stores. The business will celebrate its 75th year in 2015.
The General Motors Lordstown plant, Eastwood Mall, Youngstown State University stadium and thousands of shopping mall stores are some of the projects for which Gerson has provided furnishings, such as doors, frames, hardware and other items, in the past decades.
“I am very lucky,” Gerson said.
This all began when his father, Samuel L. Gerson, bought the entire Mahoning Lumber operation that was on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown for $1,875 in 1940. Samuel owned other lumber companies and a demolition company.
In 1959, Bill took over the operations at Mahoning and he has been there ever since. He moved the business to Indianola Avenue to make way for Interstate 680 on Mahoning.
Then, things started to change for Bill and Mahoning Lumber. A majority of his business prior to the shuttering of the steel mills was to provide furnishings and lumber for residences owned by steel mill workers.
“I saw it coming,” he said.
By the 1980s, more than 80 percent of his business was gone.
“If it wasn’t for DeBartolo and [others] I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
The DeBartolo Corp. helped him get into the shopping mall business. His work with the company would take him to Florida in the 1980s where he helped to open store after store by being the middle man between the product manufacturers and the superintendents on the jobs.
“If we were going to succeed, I had to go somewhere,” he said.
A trailer with “Mahoning Lumber” on the side got him more and more business in Florida.
“All I would do is just sit there and wait for them to come in,” he said.
In 15 years, he did more than 3,000 stores for DeBartolo. He has done more than 10,000 stores in the country. This year he will do more than 100 stores.
“It keeps me young,” he said.
His current office doesn’t have a trailer or a lumber yard, but he still continues to be on the ball with making sure his customers are taken care of while on the job.
Rounds has known Bill through the phone for about a decade, and he can continuously tell stories of Bill’s efforts in making sure the products are there when they are needed.
“I just shoot him all of my work for hardware and such because I know he can get it there for me,” he said. “To a lot of people we are just a number to them these days, but with Bill, he is there. He will make that call. He will make that happen.”