No joke. NPR reporter Dan Bobkoff visited Youngstown to do a story about its thriving business incubator, which now employs about 300 in downtown. Here’s what he had to say:

“Youngstown has been down so long it’s become shorthand for the Rust Belt,” he said. “When I heard that a block of Youngstown is starting to look like a tiny Silicon Valley, I drove down there to check it out.”

Software start-ups at this “managed business cluster” get free rent and utilities courtesy of the state — and the investment appears to be paying off. Eight companies call the incubator home. The stand-out is Turning Technologies, a maker of audience response devises, which was rated the fastest-growing software company in the nation by a trade magazine in 2007.

The incubator isn’t turning the economy in Youngstown around, Bobkoff reports, but it’s helping change some of the negative stereotypes that have plagued this city.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100762987

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