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Former foes in Warren mayor’s race unite to improve city
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Doug Franklin and Dennis Blank waged a slugfest of a campaign in 2015 when Franklin won re-election to a second term as mayor.
The campaign featured attacks on Franklin for everything wrong with Warren. It also featured criticism of Blank’s arrival back in his hometown late in life.
But the two showed that they have put those differences aside during a recent presentation to city council describing a public-private venture they call the Fund For Warren’s Future that they believe can reverse the city’s decades of economic and social decline.
Blank did much of the heavy lifting during the presentation, citing data showing that the percentage of Warren adults engaged in the workforce is 49.8 percent, lower than Cleveland, Youngstown or any other of the 20 cities Blank checked.
“I grew up in a town where we always compared ourselves to Massillon in everything,” Blank said of Warren. “Massillon is at 62 [percent]. We’re at 49. We just don’t have people out there working, who can pay taxes and make investments.”
Other numbers were also troubling: The city has lost 36 percent of its population since 1970 compared with a 60 percent gain nationally; the city is older than the nation and state, in part because it lacks people from age 29 to 59, the “critical middle years” for earning.
Warren median household income is less than $30,000 per year, 47 percent below the Ohio average. The median value of a Warren house dropped during the Great Recession, but continued to crash afterward, unlike the country as a whole.
Since late last year, Blank and Franklin have been meeting with business leaders and local foundations. They’ve proposed the city establish some consensus on how to “get more people engaged in growing this city,” Blank said.
The two found partners in Covelli Enterprises and AVI Foodsystems, two of the biggest companies in the city. They also believe they have the support of the Wean Foundation and Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, they said.
They believe those entities could provide more than $100,000, but the city needs to demonstrate a commitment as well, of $50,000, Franklin and Blank said. In the coming weeks, after the fund is established, city council will be asked for legislation that commits the city to the $50,000.
Blank said Wednesday city officials have shown support.
Blank worked 25 years for Time Inc., where he spent 15 years at Fortune magazine, serving as marketing director and later associate publisher of Money magazine.
He said the point of economic development is “to stir up some activity, get some interest, get more people looking at us, get more people who want to visit, get more people who want to stay for dinner or go to a concert, do whatever.”
The city has no economic-development department, so it relies on others, such as the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber and Western Reserve Port Authority.
But before the fund can begin, it has to establish “what we’re selling. We don’t really have very good data about the city. We haven’t surveyed our existing businesses to find out what they like, what they don’t like.”
There’s no “really good inventory of properties. We don’t have a political agreement on a strategy. We haven’t really had a good discussion of that, and we don’t have any goals.”
Blank and Franklin have established several relatively small goals, and they listed a few of them. One is related to the U.S. Route 422 corridor, which will receive millions of grant-funded improvements in the coming months.
That makes it a good target for investment. But first surveys of the buidings and desires of the residents should be done, then distribute the findings to business people.
“The good news that you’re seeing in the city of Warren is record amounts of investment in downtown Warren particularly,” Franklin said. “So there is some momentum, and we think this initiative helps us capture some of that momentum and gives us a different economic development accelerator.”