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Port authority helping Mahoning County trailer company expand
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Western Reserve Port Authority has authorized its economic development director to finalize a capital lease that will help Trailstar International, a Mahoning County trailer manufacturer, build a $9.3 million, 66,300-square-foot manufacturing facility expansion at its state Route 62 facilities.
The expansion is expected to add 40 to 50 workers at the business, which is located in Smith Township near Alliance. Trailstar builds trailers mostly used in farming, roadwork and construction.
A capital lease is a tool available to the port authority’s Northeast Ohio Development and Finance Authority in which the authority takes temporary ownership of the property, eliminating the cost of sales taxes on construction materials.
Economic development director Anthony Trevena said about half of the cost of a typical construction project is for building materials, so Trailstar will save sales taxes of about $337,000.
“This is what a community does to incentivize a company to be here,” Trevena said of a capital lease. “We are excited they are choosing to grow in Mahoning County.” The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber also is assisting the company with state incentives.
The approval came at Wednesday’s monthly port authority meeting at the Covelli Enterprises offices.
Trevena and Meghan Reed, director of the Trumbull County Historical Society, also talked about a building on Warren’s “Millionaire’s Row” that the historical society is acquiring with help from the port authority.
The city identified it as one of 10 properties it owns that the port authority can help transfer to new ownership more efficiently than the city can. Cities have more cumbersone requirements when selling land, such as requiring bids, Trevena explained.
The building, at 328 Mahoning Avenue, will become the TCHS offices and Cultural Education Center, allowing its other building – the John Stark Edwards Home on Monroe Street Northwest – to add display rooms.
The new location is the former Owen Morgan House, built in 1894. Morgan was a carriage manufacturer who built the body for the first Packard automobile in 1899 in Warren, Reed said.
The title transfer from the city to the port authority and then to the historical society will take place at 4 p.m. today.
Michael F. Welsh, the newest member of the port authority’s board of directors, was unable attend the meeting – his first – because he operates a landscaping company that was busy with snow plowing.