Trumbull County Looks To Diversify Economy After Manufacturing’s Decline

ML Schultze, Your Voice Ohio

Manufacturing is among the first sectors to get hit by a recession and the last to battle back. So for decades, a Northeast Ohio county like Trumbull, built on steel and autos, has struggled even when others have recovered.

Now, by accident and intention, Trumbull County is diversifying.

The county still has steel, auto and other heavy manufacturing, but they’re far smaller shops than in the days when more than 12,000 people reported for work at the massive Packard Electric complex alone.

Former Packerd Electric complex in Warren, Ohio. [Lisa DeJong / Your Voice Ohio]

But Albert Sumell, an economist with Youngstown State’s Center for Working-Class Studies, says there’s a whisp of a silver lining in that loss.

“We have become a much more diversified economy, largely because we’re much less dependent on manufacturing because manufacturing has already declined so much,” Sumell said. “Even if it’s for a bad reason, the fact that we’re more diversified now than we were means that we’re less susceptible to the fluctuations in the overall economy.” 

A New Economic Driver

One path for diversification is taking shape on 300 acres in rural Lordstown, where the parent company of Marshall’s, TJ Maxx and Homegoods plans to build a $170 million warehouse complex.

The Lordstown warehouse promises a thousand jobs with the help of roughly $3.5 million in state job creation tax credits and a 10-year 75 percent property tax abatement. Supporters include Republican Mayor Arno Hill, Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan, and about three-quarters of the voters in a special election in August.

Given Trumbull County’s nearly half-century struggle over jobs, it may seem incongruous that there was any opposition. But there was.

Neighbors argued rezoning 300 acres of residential green space is too high a price to pay for jobs paying $12 an hour. (TJX isn’t providing pay ranges beyond saying they’ll vary based on the job.)

Shari Harrell with the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley [Lisa DeJong / Your Voice Ohio]

Shari Harrell heads the  Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley , which has been working on building a cohesive community and good jobs in the Mahoning Valley. She says she hasn’t studied the details of the TJX project and understands there may be valid reasons for the zone change, but she has concerns.

“I don’t ever want to turn my back on the opportunity to bring jobs to the community, but how is it going to work? How are you going to get those people to those jobs, where are you going to find those people, what are the requirements, do we have what it takes?” Harrell asks.

She says parts of the project seem to run counter to a regional approach to creating good and inclusive jobs.

“We have gone down the path of sprawl and incentivizing companies at whatever cost to build wherever,” Harrell said. “We lose green space, we leave empty buildings everywhere, we create more infrastructure when we can’t support what we already have. We really have to think about the concepts of job hubs and mobility and connecting everybody.”

Harrell says she’s seeing a small but growing number of young people tackling that.

Tapping a New Opportunity

Adam Keck and Sarah Braun founded Modern Methods Brewery on David Grohl Alley — a quirky embrace of the Foo Fighters founder and Warren native son.

 Sarah Braun and Adam Keck, founders of Modern Methods Brewery outside their Victorian home in Warren, Ohio. [Lisa DeJong / Your Voice Ohio]

The brew pub is sleek wood and steel and brick and 50-pound bags of local malt awaiting the next brew. Keck says they and their 42 investors are changing Trumbull’s conventional wisdom.

“The narrative was, ‘Well, we’ve just gotta wait... It’s just a matter of time before we rope in another big steel company or another company that’s going to bring in hundreds of jobs,” Keck said.

But, he says, there’s an alternative.

“There’s a wave of people who think it’s not going to be one big company, it’s not going to be one big investment. It’s going to be a lot of base hits.”

Improving the Emotional Connection

A growing part of the remedy for struggling communities is improving people’s emotional connection to place and to each other with things like the arts, safety, parks and schools, says YSU economist Albert Sumell. He acknowledges communities most needing those amenities are often too strapped to support them.

“If you’re stuck in this vicious cycle, it’s hard to stop it. But the corollary is if you have the virtuous cycle, that also builds on itself,” Sumell said.

The trick, he says, is slowing the decline enough to change direction, and the TJX warehouse complex may be part of that.

When it comes to quality of life, some of Trumbull’s industrial past continues to pay it forward.

Long after Trumbull County stopped producing the Packard automobile, the W.D. Packard Concert Bandplays on -- free Sunday concerts in Packard Music Hall -- thanks to industrialist William Doud Packard.

A performance at Packard Music Hall [ML Schultze / Your Voice Ohio]

Though it’s rooted in the past, the Community Foundation’s Shari Harrell says experiences like this need to be part of Trumbull’s thinking about its future.

“We get so focused on what’s gone, what’s missing, what’s not there that we neglect to look at what’s good, what’s growing, what is here.”