page_title: Youngstown, Ohio
section_title: Current
hierarchical_section_title: Youngstown, Ohio / Economy / Current
caption_attribution_description: Buildings in Youngstown, Ohio
context_page_description: Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the county seat of Mahoning County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Youngstown had a city proper population of 66,982, making it the 9th largest city in Ohio. Youngstown is the mainstay of the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a population of 565,773; this makes it the 105th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, and the 7th-largest in Ohio.
  Youngstown is on the Mahoning River, approximately 65 miles southeast of Cleveland and 61 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Despite having its own media market, Youngstown is often included in commercial and cultural depictions of both Northeast Ohio as well as the Greater Pittsburgh Region due to these proximities. Youngstown is also the midway between New York City and Chicago, Illinois via Interstate 80.
  The city was named for John Young, an early settler from Whitestown, New York, who established the community's first sawmill and gristmill. Youngstown is a midwestern city, falling within a region of America often referred to as the Rust Belt.
context_section_description: Youngstown is the site of several steel and metalworking operations, though nothing on the scale seen during the "glory days" of the "Steel Valley". The city's largest employer is Youngstown State University (YSU), an urban public campus that serves about 15,000 students, just north of downtown.
  The blow dealt to the community's industrial economy in the 1970s was slightly mitigated by the auto production plants in the metropolitan area. In the late 1980s, the Avanti, an automobile with a fiberglass body originally designed by Studebaker to compete with the Corvette, was manufactured in an industrial complex on Youngstown's Albert Street. This company moved away after just a few years. A mainstay of Youngstown's industrial economy has long been the GM Lordstown plant. The General Motors' Lordstown Assembly plant is the area's largest industrial employer. Once one of the nation's largest auto plants in terms of square feet, the Lordstown facility was home to production of the Chevrolet Impala, Vega, and Cavalier. It was expanded and retooled in 2002 with a new paint facility. However, this region was dealt another blow in early 2019 with the closing of Lordstown Assembly in March 2019.
  The largest industrial employers within the city limits are Vallourec Star Steel Company (formerly North Star Steel), in the Brier Hill district, and Exal Corporation on Poland Avenue. The latter has recently expanded its operations.
  Youngstown's downtown, which once underscored the community's economic difficulties, is a site of new business growth. The Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI), in the heart of downtown, houses several start-up technology companies that have received office space, furnishings, and access to utilities. Some Incubator-supported companies have earned recognition, and a few are starting to outgrow their current space. Inc. Magazine rated one such company–Turning Technologies–as the fastest-growing privately held software company in the United States and 18th fastest-growing privately held company overall. To keep such companies downtown, the YBI secured approval to demolish a row of nearby vacant buildings to clear space for expansion. The project will be funded by a $2 million federal grant awarded in 2006. In 2014, the YBI was ranked as the number 1 university associated business incubator in the world by the Swedish UBII (University Business Incubator Index). In 2015, the YBI was the top University Associated Incubator in North America, and came in second to the Dublin Enterprise & Technology Centre, also known as the Guinness Enterprise Centre, in Dublin.
  Extensive coverage of Youngstown's economic challenges has overshadowed the city's long entrepreneurial tradition. A number of products and enterprises introduced in Youngstown became national household names. Among them is Youngstown-based Schwebel's Bakery, which was established in neighboring Campbell in the 20th century. The company now distributes bread products nationally. In the 1920s, Youngstown was the birthplace of the Good Humor brand of ice cream novelties, and the popular franchise of Handel's Homemade Ice Cream & Yogurt was established there in the 1940s. In the 1950s, Youngstown-born developer Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr. established one of the country's first modern shopping plazas in the suburban Boardman. The fast-food chain, Arby's, opened the first of its restaurants in Boardman in 1964, and Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips was headquartered in Youngstown in the late 1970s. More recently, the city's downtown hosted the corporate headquarters of the now-defunct pharmacy chain store Phar-Mor, which was established by Youngstown native Mickey Monus.
caption: Downtown Youngstown at night
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