EDA Chief Williams Joins LindenPointe Celebration
HERMITAGE, Pa. – Ticking off various milestones in the development of the eCenter@LindenPointe, Gary Gulla, Hermitage’s assistant city manager, recalled a point in 2009 when the project appeared to be in jeopardy.
“We had some ideas, we had a design, we had some money set aside, but we really needed the big partner to help us make this happen,” he recalled.
To make the case for federal funds for the project, the then-mayor of neighboring Youngstown “came out of his city, out of his county, out of his state and out of his federal region to come over here to Mercer County and tell the Economic Development Administration regional director from Philadelphia that this was an investment that they ended to make in this community,” he continued. “That was definitely a defining moment and the results where that we got a $4.2 million grant to make the eCenter possible.”
That former Youngstown mayor -- Jay Williams, who as assistant secretary of the U.S. Commerce Department now heads EDA – was back as the featured speaker at “Come Together: An Evening with the eCenter Community,” held last night at the Avalon at Buhl Park Country Club.
During the program, incubator companies, sponsors, partners and programs were recognized and spotlighted. Awards presented included the Young Entrepreneur Award, presented to Chip Beck, author and app developer; the Emerging entrepreneur Award, presented to Andrew Rademacher, founder of Lems Shoes; the VIP Award, presented to Gulla; and the MVP Award, presented to Neil Hosick, Hermitage facilities coordinator.
“Tonight was really the culmination of several years of work,” remarked Yvonne English, executive director of the eCenter, which provides incubation services for startups and programs to encourage entrepreneurship starting in high school.
“We believe you have to grow entrepreneurship in this area, so it’s really an ecosystem that we’re trying to create, not just grow a building,” English said. The incubator, which began accepting clients in 2012, has about a dozen tenant and affiliate companies and is nearly filled except for one remaining space onsite, she said.
The successes being celebrated at the event were “the direct result of the cooperation that you not only believe in or give lip service to but that you actually put into practice,” Williams said. “Because of that hard work, the LindenPointe campus is heling businesses grow, driving the diversification of the local economy and creating quality economic opportunities,” he remarked.
At that 2009 meeting with EDA officials, the former mayor recalled, he spoke of the importance of regional collaboration and the “porous border that exists between Ohio and Pennsylvania” and the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, one that people from both states cross every day for work, entertainment and other activities. “I highlighted the fact that the shared benefits that would be derived from this project would be significant and long-lasting,” he said. “Here we are five years later and we are seeing the validation of that.”
As he travels across the county, Williams says he continually points to the success of the Ohio-Pennsylvania region. “The level of cooperation here is not something that you should take for granted,” he remarked. “Believe it or not, there are many regions and communities across the country that do not enjoy this level of collaborative engagement. They continue to pursue the poaching strategy. … It is a zero-sum game.”
Asked in an interview how conditions such as the indictments earlier this year of Youngstown Mayor John McNally and Mahoning County Auditor Michael Sciortino affect how the region is viewed in terms of economic development, Williams, who became mayor as the Mahoning Valley struggled to emerge not only from longstanding economic woes but a series of political and corruption scandals, said such situations are “unfortunate” but did not directly address the circumstances of those individuals.
“At the end of the day this is about the stakeholders beyond the elected officials,” he remarked. It’s about “the citizens who get up and go to work” or decide to start a business, and the institutions of the community. “At the end of the day, the citizens and the electorate, they have to decide what type of community they want, how they want that community to be defined, and when they make that decision and when they make that decision unequivocally clear, the continued progress of Youngstown won’t be overshadowed.”
Williams said he frequently comes across individuals who either recognize him from Youngstown or don’t realize he is from there who talk about what is going on in terms of economic development in the city and the Mahoning Valley, and to hear news such as the Youngstown Business Incubator’s recent ranking as the top university-affiliated incubator in the world “speaks volumes to the level of determination that still exists” in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys. “The progress is real. It is being validated,” he said.
He also called the $3 million EDA grant recently awarded to YBI to renovate its fifth building well deserved. “There are a number of projects that are submitted for consideration to our regional office and for this project to, on its merits, warrant this type of investment again speaks volumes for where this community has arrived and where we have yet to go,” he remarked.
Kim Garrett, co-founder and president of Rooted Beauty, which manufactures and distributes skin care products for more than 200 stores and growing, credited the eCenter with providing the launch pad for her company, one of several eCenter clients exhibiting at the event. She also described English as “an integral part of Rooted Beauty from Day One.”
The eCenter space allowed Garrett, who had been in Pittsburgh, and her partner, who was in New Jersey, “to collaborate and push forward in a way that we might not otherwise have been able to do.” Though Rooted Beauty’s primary office relocated to Cleveland because Garrett’s husband got a job there, the company remains an affiliated client at the eCenter and maintains service relationships and warehouse operations in the Shenango Valley, she said.
“You guys were really the starting point for Rooted Beauty,” she said.
Another eCenter client, Gecko Robotics, which manufactures robots used for inspections, had completed its first paid job inspecting the interior of a boiler earlier in the day, Jake Loosararian, its vice president, reported.
Being at LindenPointe was “more valuable than any amount of money could be for a person like me because it took me from the idea of having a business as just being this thing in the clouds that I could never attain to being something that I could actually reach out and grab,” Loosararian said.
“That whole ecosystem [English] was talking about, it works,” he remarked.
Pictured: Gary Hinkson, Hermitage city manager; Gary Gulla, Hermitage assistant city manager; Yvonne English, eCenter executive director; and Jay Williams, U.S assistant commerce secretary.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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