Florida Foodie Eats Youngstown

Often, an outsider will help you appreciate local assets:

In line with the community's effort to change its image, the city government along with the university (Youngstown State University), has organized an urban renewal project titled Youngstown 2010, which makes this an up and coming city. Part of its redevelopment is to attract more business in the area. With the redevelopment in progress, small businesses are starting to develop.

Rosetta Stone Cafe and Wine Bar is just one of the new and upcoming restaurants in the heart of the downtown district. Offers a modern american cuisine and live music. My friends and I had a wonderful meal and the live music was a plus.

The blogger of the restaurant review lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, which just so happens to be a Greater Youngstown Diaspora hot spot.

Youngstown Urban Policy Incubator

From Phil Kidd, the man behind Defend Youngstown:

We’ve committed to being a smaller community and our planning process is geared towards rightsizing our neighborhoods, so that’s lead to a very strong collaboration between the civic base and city hall. So those models, from a government or consolidation of service standpoint, those are things that larger communities can learn from, and also more importantly, we can do almost anything we want on the ground. So if it’s a really progressive deconstruction program or a question of how we deal with legislation, it’s almost an absolute incubator. We’ve created a situation where almost anything goes, and so you come to Youngstown to try almost any initiative that you want to try.

Come to Youngstown and test your big idea.

An Economic Way Forward

Not that Youngstown should put all its eggs in any one basket, but I see great potential in the energy sector for a regional economic renaissance:

"We want to find ways to reduce this nation's dependence on oil by creating alternative and sustainable forms of energy using the skills and talents already possessed by local industrial workers,'' said Jack Scott, president and chief operating officer of Parsons Corp., California.

Scott, a graduate of Youngstown State University, said he sees no reason why a corridor or region including Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Pittsburgh and Warren, could not become a leader in manufacturing ''Green'' technology.

''There is the intellectual capacity and the skills to make the necessary changes to turn the area around,'' Scott said Monday. ''We only have to better utilize the talents of people already here.''

Notice that Mr. Scott doesn't live or work in Greater Youngstown. He's an expatriate who still sees greatness in the Steel Valley. Pay close attention to his geography of redevelopment. It's not just the home to his alma mater. He's talking about all of Cleveburgh.

Rebranding Youngstown

Geographic perceptions are tough to shake. Consider this story about how a couple from New York City ended up in Pittsburgh:

"One of my first impressions was it was so green. Pittsburgh was just off my radar. If I thought anything about it, I thought it was going to be more like Minneapolis, very concrete, dystopian post-industrial shut-down landscape." Instead she was impressed with its lush beauty. She had also gotten wind of Pittsburgh's verdant art scene, but that is not what she experienced first.

Pittsburgh tends to surprise most people who visit the city for the first time. The White House announcement of the G-20 summit to be held in Pittsburgh shocked the press corps. Pittsburgh? Why Pittsburgh?

Journalists tend to cling to folklore geographies, thus reinforcing stereotypes. But readers do need a point of reference, even if it means writing that Lordstown is near Cleveland. You might not be from Northeast Ohio, but you've likely heard of Cleveland. But Youngstown? Youngstown?

I was pleasantly surprised with Youngstown. I was shown the good, bad and ugly of the city, but there's a lot of potential for a vital core. That's how Pittsburgh reinvented itself. I could give a tour of the bad and ugly in Pittsburgh. There's plenty to find.

I love the Garden District neighborhood and Youngstown should aim to attract outsiders to live there. The proximity to Mill Creek Park and downtown is a tremendous asset and screams gentrification. Actually, gentrification is already happening and the downtown core is on the upswing, despite what the national press thinks:

Now, experts say Elkhart can look at the recession as an opportunity to make the necessary changes that cities like Youngstown didn’t, and avoid the devastating population declines that have hurt Youngstown so badly.

A little late for Elkhart to avoid Youngstown's mistakes. Whatever Elkhart can do now to improve, Youngstown can do. Both cities have the same opportunity in front of them. What's Elkhart like? Does anyone reading this post who knows Youngstown have a firsthand impression of Elkhart?

That brings me to my rebranding suggestion, which should get me into some hot water. Imagine a reporter writing that Lordstown was near Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is breaking through the negative Rust Belt image. Deserved or not, the Steel City is now on the radar. Youngstown can piggyback on this publicity, if it so chooses.

The Greater Youngstown Attraction

Like every city in Ohio, Canton is fighting brain drain. And like every city around the United States, Canton is losing. The problem is that all the resources are aimed at retaining college graduates (from the article hyperlinked above):

A few years ago, the city put a lot of effort into keeping its young people here.

It hired Next Generation Consulting, a market research group out of Wisconsin, in 2006 with the hope it could stave off “brain drain.”

But three years later, a survey by the Washington-based Fordham Institute shows more than half the students in Ohio colleges plan to leave the state after they graduate. ...

... The Fordham study mentions some suggestions to entice graduates to stay in Ohio. These include: Increasing students’ community involvement; a state income tax credit for those who remain in Ohio for 10 years; money for a down payment on a home; graduate school scholarships and fellowships; and more co-op programs and internships.

Hiring Next Generation Consulting is a waste of money. Enacting the study's recommendations would be foolish. I track anti-brain drain initiatives around the country and throughout the world. After three years of research, I'm still looking for an actionable success story. Trying to keep talent from leaving the region is irrational. Anyone who claims he or she can do it is a charlatan.

The economic development game, in terms of people, is all about attraction. But the Rust Belt seems loathe to accept this. The wound of industrial collapse and subsequent exodus is still fresh. Greater Youngstown should take a page from the book of post-Katrina New Orleans:

Tim Williamson, president and co-founder of the Idea Village, a nonprofit that identifies and supports promising local entrepreneurs, agrees.

"New Orleans is attractive because there are lots of opportunities here and less layoffs than in other places like Boston or San Francisco," Williamson said.

In addition to digital media, Williamson said other hot sectors include green business, those ventures that pursue environmental sustainability, and urban redevelopment.

"Katrina reversed the brain drain, so you've seen an influx of new talent and capital coming in," he said. "If you're an individual looking to take on the most pressing economic and social challenges, there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here with entrepreneurship."

Young adults, particularly this generation, are nomads. There are legions "looking to take on the most pressing economic and social challenges." But shrinking cities do little to tap into this energy. Instead, they obsess out-migration, even when the numbers are relatively low.

Like New Orleans, Youngstown is offering the opportunity of a lifetime. Right now. If you are considering moving back. Do it. I'm doing everything in my power to return to the region. I want to be part of the Rust Belt revival. One reason is native pride. But my main motivation is the love of a great challenge and chance to make my mark.

Newfoundland in Youngstown

Newfoundland has its own time zone, one half hour off of the rest of Canada. I don't know if it is true or not, but a Newfie once told me that the butter in his home province must be yellow, by law. My point being that Newfoundland is VERY parochial, much like the Steel Valley. I think both regions can learn from each other. A good example is Canadian labor migration:

But in Alberta, where many Newfoundlanders came to find lucrative oil patch jobs, the Hibernia expansion provides only a fleeting opportunity for work - not nearly enough to persuade the island's diaspora to sell homes, uproot families and return home. Contrast that with Alberta, which yesterday saw the first flash of an expected reawakening of the oil sands - which could provide tens of thousands of jobs for a decade - as Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd. reinvigorated a small, stalled oil sands project.

That certainty is what's keeping Sean Wyatt in Alberta. Experience has taught him that the promise of returning home for a single project can easily be distorted into disappointment. Originally from St. John's, he left in 2001 to find work in Texas. Two years later, he returned to Newfoundland for a design job with Husky Energy's White Rose offshore field.

It was nice to be home, but that job lasted less than two years. Soon, he found himself chasing mainland work again. He moved to Calgary in 2005. He misses Newfoundland, and wishes he could be near his parents, who are in their 70s. But Hibernia South, which is promising few new jobs, isn't enough to pull him back.

The pull of home is strong and folks from Newfoundland tend to carry their identity with them better than others. Despite the skepticism, in-migration to the chronically struggling province is on the upswing. But this isn't a tide of newcomers, but one of natives boomeranging back. Newfoundland isn't for the faint of heart.

A few of us Rust Belt boosters see something similar going on in Youngstown. Apropos of Atlantic Canada, energy would seem to be the silver lining calling home expatriates. However, I can only blog about the handwriting I see on the wall. It will take something much stronger to lure skeptical expatriates back to the area.

Youngstown Disconnect

I WILL SHOUT YOUNGSTOWN poses two questions:

1 - how to explain the growing divergence between Cleveland and Pittsburgh?

2 - how does this divergence effect Youngstown, the place in the middle of the two?

The above two question are, in part, informed by one article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The City of Champions ranked 18th, which put it in the tier of the 20 economically strongest metropolitan areas.

The city was behind such places as San Antonio (first); Tulsa, Okla. (ninth); and Des Moines, Iowa (14th). It was just behind Harrisburg (17th).

Pittsburgh bested New Haven, Conn., edging out the home of Yale University, which came in 19th.

What the authors of the "MetroMonitor" found is that areas hit by declines in manufacturing and the bursting of the housing bubble are feeling more pain in the current recession than areas that are strong in health care, education and government.

Hence, Detroit (100th); Toledo, Ohio, (92nd); and Youngstown, Ohio, (90th) are mixed in with other of the weakest performing metropolitan areas such as Las Vegas (89th); Fresno, Calif., (94th); and Bradenton, Fla. (99th). Las Vegas and Bradenton and Orlando, Fla., (79th) have each experienced the one-two punch of the bursting of the housing bubble and the weakening of the tourism trade.

I'll augment all of the above with a quote from friend of the show and blogger at The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn:

Richard Florida just issued a call in this month's Atlantic Monthly to build "rail connectivity within the mega-regions. There are the fast trains along the Boston/New York/Washington corridor that have allowed Washington, in effect, to become a commuter suburb of greater New York. But how about a place like Detroit? If Detroit were better connected to Chicago, one could imagine Detroit having a better reason for existing. Or Pittsburgh. If Pittsburgh were better connected to Chicago or even to Washington, D.C.—it’s only a four-hour drive—that could spur growth." I won't use his example cities, but will assume in our example that we've got high speed rail between Chicago and Milwaukee and Chicago and Indy that provides a terminal to terminal journey time of 90 minutes. In the case of Milwaukee, this is actually already true - future rail upgrades will only shave that time down even further.

At issue is not only the economic disparity between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but Youngstown and Pittsburgh. How can Pittsburgh rank 18th and Youngstown 90th when the two cities are practically right on top of each other?

The answer is the lack of connectivity between them. Better passenger rail would help, tremendously. Furthermore, just say yes to Western Reserve Road widening. Lastly, get behind the Regional Visioning project. Mayor Jay Williams is already on board. You should be, too.