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Warren-Trumbull Community Improvement Corporation reformulating and hoping to emulate Youngstown success
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
With help of the Trumbull County Planning Commission, Warren-Trumbull County Community Improvement Corp. has updated its bylaws and is filling seven private-sector spots on its board of directors.
CIC hopes to fill many of them at its meeting in November, board members said.
The not-for-profit group created in the 1960s encourages industrial, economic, commercial and civic development in Warren and Trumbull County.
After Atty. John Pogue decided to step down as CIC board chairman, the board decided to “reformulate,” said Julie Edwards, a planner with the planning commission and an alternate board member for the Trumbull County commissioners.
She and Trish Nuskievicz, executive director of the planning commission, rewrote the bylaws, which the former board approved last month. Among the changes is adding organizations to the board that conduct economic development, including the Western Reserve Port Authority and Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, Edwards said.
The seven private-sector board members will represent utilities, finance, labor, real estate, law, accounting and an at-large position. Four officers are likely to be elected at the next meeting.
Although the CIC has not garnered much public notice in the past decade, it did construct two 10,000-square foot “spec” buildings in the Warren Commerce Park on North River Road between 10 and 20 years ago, said Tom Humphries, president and CEO of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
“It fulfilled the mission of what we are trying to do,” Humphries said.
In the past three years, in an attempt to reinvigorate the Warren-Trumbull CIC, the group has studied the success achieved by the Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp., Humphries said.
The Youngstown CIC and the Regional Chamber have managed 80 properties in Youngstown’s downtown since the 1990s, resulting in $40 million to $45 million in new or renovated buildings, Humphries said.
The work of the CIC and private developers has doubled the number of people who work and live in downtown Youngstown in the past 10 years, according to a 2016 article written by the chamber in the Economic Development Journal.
“I’d like to have the same kind of results we’ve had in Youngstown to have them in Warren,” Humphries said. The Regional Chamber manages both CIC organizations, and Humphries is a Warren-Trumbull CIC board member.
For now, the Warren-Trumbull CIC manages the 58,000-square-foot former RG Steel office building on Pine Street Southeast and is attempting to find tenants. It has one tenant using 2,000 square feet so far.