About our community

The largest employer in the city now is Youngstown State University, an urban public campus with about 13,000 students. The largest industrial employers in the metro area are General Motors' Lordstown auto assembly plant and Delphi Packard Electric Systems and the WCI Steel plant, both in Warren, Ohio.

Providing a glimmer of industrial hope is the Youngstown Business Incubator, a downtown nonprofit organization housed in a former department store building where fledgling technology-based companies can grow. The incubator currently has about

16 business tenants and will soon begin construction on a multi-million dollar downtown technology center where some of its largest firms will relocate. This effort is expected to retain hundreds of good-paying jobs and eventually create hundreds more.

Construction began on 60-home upscale development called Bailey Center in 2004, and a grant from the U.S. Dept. of HUD allowed for the demolition of Westlake Terrace, a public housing project that was one of the most dilapidated and crime-ridden areas of the city (it is being replaced with a mixture of senior housing, rental townhouses and for-sale single-family homes). Low real estate prices and the fervent efforts of the Youngstown Central Area Improvement Corporation (CIC) have resulted in the purchase of several long-abandoned downtown buildings (many by out-of-town investors) and their restoration and conversion into specialty shops, restaurants, and eventually condominium, and a nonprofit organization called Wick Neighbors is planning a $250 million New Urbanism revitalization of Smoky Hollow, a neighborhood that borders both downtown and the YSU campus. The neighborhood will eventually comprise about 400 residential units, YSU student housing, retail space, and a central park, with construction slated to begin in 2006.

Also nearing completion is the Youngstown Convocation Center (expected to be completed in October 2005), which was made possible by a $26 million federal grant. Located on former steel mill property in front of the downtown skyline, the new arena will seat about 5,500, and has as its anchor tenant a hockey team, the Steel hounds, who will compete in the Central Hockey League in 2005-06. The City also plans to develop vacant land adjacent to the convocation center, either as a park, a river walk (the Mahoning River flows through the site), an amphitheater, or possibly a new athletic stadium for use by the city's public and private high schools.