This is a very big deal in Youngstown.

Ten years ago, people were afraid to walk in the city’s downtown. Next month, a private developer is unveiling luxury apartments starting at $1,200 a month in one of the city’s formerly vacant downtown buildings.
People in the community have been watching with excitement and apprehension as the project took shape over the past year and change. Last year, I was told, only five people lived in Youngstown’s downtown, excluding housing projects. (A friend of mine joked, they were lobbing to have home delivery …

Los Angeles-based photographer David Zaitz took a six day road trip through the Rust Belt in July 2009.  Zaitz drove over 1,900 miles in seven days, visiting legendary Rust Belt cities such as Gary, South Bend, Elkhardt, Youngstown, Wheeling, Canton, Akron, Detroit and Flint.

Zaitz will be posting additional images and commentary from his trip in the coming weeks.
A selection of his photographic essay can be seen here.

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The Associated Press reports federal officials are evaluating a prison in rural Standish, Michigan, as a possible site to hold Gitmo prisoners.
It’s not surprising to me that officials would head to an economically depressed state to try to do this.
Youngstown famously became associated with prisons, some of which were privately run, moving into town in the wake of the loss of steel jobs.
Opinion amongst locals on the prison is mixed, the AP reports.
Some think it would make the area a terrorist target. And surprisingly, union workers at the prison don’t …

People in Youngstown are planning parties and hosting special events to honor the return of disgraced congressman Jim Traficant, who will be released from prison next month.
This comes at a embarrassment and disappointment to supporters of the movement to revitalize the once-prosperous steel town.
The Vindicator is carrying an opinion piece by Rust Wire contributor Tyler Clark deploring Traficant supporters. Traficiant has been in a federal prison since 2002, when he was convicted on 10 counts including racketeering, bribery and tax evasion.
It’s a clash of new gaurd verses old guard. Supporters …

My good friend in Youngstown, John Slanina, organized a group bus ride around Youngstown’s Mahoning County recently.

This video is one of the results.

Slanina sent an email to 20 friends and asked them to bring a friend and meet him at the bus stop. The experience was meant to familiarize local residents with the public transportation system.

Youngstown scored a feature story in Entrepreneur Magazine, which is raking among the top ten towns to start a small business including Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland.
Youngstown’s highly successful business incubator for software start-ups plays center stage in the upbeat story about a down-and-out down that’s rallying for a new direction.
Check out the lede:
“Sure, Youngstown may not have the economic firepower of other cities on this list, but it has one important commodity in spades: hope.”
This is exactly the kind of coverage Youngstown has been hoping for every time some …

Writer David Masciotra is working on a book in which he will analyze Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics in context of politics, globalization and industrial decay.

He has displayed some of his work in a blog post about The Boss’ blue-collar ballad, “Youngstown.”
The song can be interpreted as a scathing condemnation of business practices that put the bottom line over the interests of American workers, to the detriment of Midwestern manufacturing towns, Masciotra writes.
An excerpt from the song:
Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept ‘em hotter than hell
I come home from ‘Nam worked my way to scarfer
A …

 
Why is Pennsylvania faring better than Ohio in this economic downturn?
“[A]lthough the recession has hit both states hard, the troubles in Ohio are clearly much worse,” this Associated Press story reports, citing an index of unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies in more than 3,000 U.S. counties.
This story attributes the difference to PA’s more diversified economy, especially its education and health-care sectors.

But, parts of Ohio have invested heavily in these fields as well. I’m not sure what the reason is but the numbers cited in this story do show a pretty stark …

Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers has resigned after pleading guilty to bribery charges in a $45 million sludge handling deal.
Meanwhile in Cleveland, County Commissioner Jimmie Dimora and County Auditor Frank Russo have been implicated–although not by name–in a wide-ranging pay-to-play corruption scheme in which developers traded favors such as trips to Las Vegas in exchange for lucrative public contracts.
Dimora, for his part, has refused to step down, blaming the FBI probe on a vast Republican conspiracy. Last week he voted in a contract for a juvenile detention center he is accused …

  Youngstown resident Megan Reed contributed this account of exploring Youngstown’s Wick Park neighborhood:
  I spent the entirety of my college life living on the North Side of Youngstown. The North side’s population is a unique blend of Youngstown State University students, professors, families and vacant mansions. These houses range in size from 2,000 square feet to some nearing 8,000 square feet. The houses now have plywood covering up their windows, trees growing over an often caved in porch, and crumbling chimneys and foundations.

  It is impossible to not walk by these homes …