Chamber's Planey Reflects on 'Series of Small Victories'
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Eric Planey says he is generally happy with what was accomplished during his four years at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, “a series of small victories” that over time hopefully will “add to the vitality” of the Mahoning Valley.
Planey, hired in 2009 to the newly created position of vice president for international business attraction, will leave the chamber next month to join Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. in New York as vice president and client executive in its leveraged finance and financial sponsors group, the chamber announced Thursday (READ STORY).
Planey said he was contacted about four months ago by a former boss who is expanding a division at his bank and asked if he would be interested in coming on board. “I always tell people my heart is in the Valley and my soul is in New York and I need to satisfy both,” he remarked.
Reflecting on his time with the chamber, Planey said he soon came to wear three hats in his position. In addition to overseeing the international attraction effort, the job he was hired for, the chamber soon recognized that the growing shale industry required “all hands on deck.” He also became co-chairman of the TechBelt Initiative spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, and effort initially linking Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown.
In January 2010, Planey and two other chamber officials were visiting the Steel Business Briefing research firm in Pittsburgh and discussing whether Youngstown would be selected for then V&M Star’s pipe mill. The conversation turned to the Marcellus Shale, and that evening, Planey conducted research online and “spent two hours reading about Marcellus shale and something called Utica shale,” he recalled.
“At the time, we didn’t know if the Utica was going to blossom or not. All we knew is that the Mahoning Valley was on the doorstep to the Marcellus shale,” he said.
With V&M -- now Vallourec Star -- announcing a month later it would move forward on its new Youngstown mill, “We knew that we had to go after supply-chain manufacturing because that’s where the opportunity is.” That decision, he predicts, will continue to pay dividends because it “helps to mitigate the boom-bust cycle” of the oil and gas industry. The Vallourec Star and Exterran Energy Solutions plants now located in Youngstown are going to produce products not just for the Utica and Marcellus plays but “for all of the nation’s oil and gas needs."
The TechBelt, formed by uniting Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown – and later Akron, Erie, Pa., and Morgantown, W.Va., -- is an economic entity with 10th largest gross domestic product in the United States, Planey said.
“All of a sudden we go toe-to-toe with Dallas, with Chicago, with New York City,” as well as cities around the world, he observed. “We have incredible assets,” the chief example being the selection of Youngstown for the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute.
“Eric's experience in the financial markets and understanding of the global economy helped shape the vision and direction of the TechBelt Initiative,” said Barb Ewing, chief operating officer of the Youngstown Business Incubator. YBI houses NAMII, which the TechBelt helped lure to Youngstown. That experience also “gave him the savvy and presence” to establish relationships with people like Eric Spiegel, CEO of Siemens Corp., which earlier this year donated more than $400 million in software and training services to Youngstown State University, Ewing noted.
“Too often, people in economic development view their role as simply implementing cookie-cutter programs: plug this company into that formula and see what happens,” she said. “Eric managed to take his knowledge, experience and vision and craft them into a unique position at the chamber that added real value to our community.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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