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President of hydraulics company to discuss possible Warren manufacturing facility Tuesday
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
City officials and the president of a California company will have a news conference at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the former corporate headquarters of Packard Electric on Dana Street Northeast to announce plans for a multimillion-dollar investment at the site.
“This potential investment will involve the purchase and reopening of 500,000 square feet of manufacturing space and administrative offices that formerly housed the Packard Automobile Co. and later the Packard Electric Co.,” according to an announcement from Mayor Doug Franklin’s office.
The announcement is referring to the former Packard administration building on the south side of Dana and former Packard manufacturing facilities on the north side of Dana.
Sources say the company makes hydraulic lifts used to park cars in parking garages around the world, and the new facility could bring as many as 200 to 300 jobs. The owner is a Warren native.
The company has an option to purchase the property and has taken steps to physically secure the facilities in recent weeks, a source said.
The former Packard facilities are owned by Sergio DiPaolo of Girard, who runs a demolition company. Some of the former manufacturing space on the north side of Dana has been scrapped and hollowed out except for a wall along Dana Street.
Officials will discuss the project and provide a time line at Tuesday’s meeting, and a few of the “subsystems manufactured by the company” will be on display, the announcement says.
In addition to Warren officials, representatives of these other economic- development organizations also are part of the project and will attend: Jobs Ohio/Team NEO, the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp., Western Reserve Port Authority, Trumbull County Planning Commission and Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
Franklin, who faces a challenge from independent candidate Dennis Blank in the Nov. 3 election, has been a part of an announcement before in which a company was said to be interested in starting up a manufacturing facility in the city.
In May 2011, Franklin and then-Mayor Michael O’Brien had a news conference attended by David McGeary, national director of East Coast operations for Titan LED of Moorpark, Calif., at which McGeary said negotiations were nearing completion to establish a factory in Warren.
The company manufactured about half of its products in Moorpark. But the Warren facility would allow the company to move all of its foreign production to the United States, McGeary said.
Titan LED did not choose Warren.
McGeary and the president of Titan LED, Brian Hennessy, could not be reached Thursday to comment on whether the company established additional manufacturing facilities elsewhere.
But Mike Fonda, a field-support facilitator at Titan LED’s Youngstown office, said Thursday that the company expanded into Simi Valley, Calif., including as recently as this year.
“All manufacturing is done in Simi Valley, California,” Fonda said.