[0:07] Hello and welcome to the Byline Breakdown, the podcast where we bring

[0:10] you the stories behind the headlines. And also, happy New Year to all of our

[0:15] listeners. I'm your host, Mike Moliterno, and today we are going to

[0:18] journey to the small but mighty village of Lowellville, a community that's

[0:22] buzzing with newfound energy and ambition. Situated along the Mahoning

[0:27] River with a population of just about 1,100, Lowellville is a testament to the

[0:32] power of transformation and the resilience of small towns.

[0:36] Our story begins with the Mahoning River, once restrained by a dam and now

[0:41] flowing freely, which has been setting the stage for an incredible revival.

[0:46] Joining us today is Dan O'Brien, the managing editor of the Business Journal

[0:50] and the writer who brought us this story. Uh Dan, great to have you here.

[0:54] Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, Mike. Thank you.

[0:57] First, I guess could you just set the stage a little bit and just tell us

[0:59] about the community of Lowellville for people who may not be familiar cuz it is

[1:03] kind of tucked away in this little out-of-the-way area of uh Mahoning

[1:07] County. Sure. It's a it's a small hamlet and

[1:11] it's, as you mentioned, flows along or it's stationed along the Mahoning River

[1:17] and it's sort of bisected by the river itself.

[1:21] And it's got a long history of immigrant population. At one time, mostly Italian

[1:26] population there in in Lowellville. And it's it's got a very tightly knit,

[1:34] very familial uh quality about it and it's a community where everybody seems

[1:42] to know everyone else. And it was once really anchored by um

[1:48] heavy industry. At one point, there was a Sharon steel plant uh that made steel

[1:54] hoops, I believe. And there's a foundry there today that's still is in

[1:57] operation. Not not by Sharon Steel obviously, but

[2:02] it had an old

[2:06] industrial history to it as well as uh is also a a trolley line that once ran

[2:14] ran through it, too. Um so that you know, it it grew up along

[2:20] the same sort of path as a lot of small industrial communities did along the

[2:23] Mahoning River throughout the late 19th and early 20th

[2:27] centuries. But obviously deindustrialization

[2:30] industrialization changed all that. The steel mill retrenchments

[2:34] during the '70s and the '80s transformed a lot of these communities. And part of

[2:39] that was the transformation of the Mahoning River itself as a lot of those

[2:45] major industrial plants had located along the banks of the Mahoning. They

[2:49] would use the river to cool the steel and the manufacturing

[2:55] products that they were pumping out of there. Um

[2:58] it it also polluted the river as well. Yeah, the story of the Mahoning Valley.

[3:04] And and you know, it it it was just an awful

[3:07] awful thing when you look at some of the EPA reports from the 1970s where

[3:13] it picked out fish with anomalies. Right.

[3:17] Physical anomalies whether that meant three eyes or or a number of different

[3:23] fins growing out of the the fish that were found there, but it was bottom line

[3:28] heavily polluted with toxins. And what's been interesting over

[3:33] the last five or six decades is that since these plants have been idled,

[3:40] since the steel industry really is no more along the river

[3:45] and they don't use the river the Mahoning River has actually been

[3:50] cleaning itself. Right.

[3:52] It's been sort of self-scrubbing over all of these decades.

[3:57] And cleaning the river is integral to really establishing a quality of life

[4:04] aspect along this whole region. And Lowellville's one of the beneficiaries

[4:11] of this. And the first step to helping clean and and accelerate

[4:16] cleansing of this river is, of course, the removal of those dams along

[4:21] Right. along the Mahoning because it's those

[4:24] dams that collect all of that toxic debris that's been left over from all

[4:29] those years. And once that's removed, it will allow for that sort of

[4:34] self-scrubbing. And it slows the flow of the river.

[4:37] Yeah, yeah. And this opens it all up. So, that was the first step is we saw in

[4:42] in investing millions and millions of millions of dollars to remove the

[4:47] the Lowellville dam. About 2 million or so, I believe, was

[4:52] was used to to open that up, which now opens up

[4:57] the potential for a riverfront park Right.

[5:00] that they're establishing right now. The the removal of the dams along the

[5:05] Mahoning River is is an ongoing process. They're sort of working their way north,

[5:09] I guess. The Mahoning River kind of goes in in weird directions. But uh but

[5:13] Lowellville was, I think, the first dam to be removed.

[5:17] And um so, they're working their way more towards Warren and everything now.

[5:21] But I guess once that happened, as you said, quality

[5:24] of life uh amenities were now possible. And I we'll

[5:29] talk about public investment in a bit, but I wanted to start with some of the

[5:33] private investment that started coming into Lowellville. Could you tell us a

[5:36] little bit about the the Estefans and what they've been doing?

[5:40] Sure. Matt Estefan, who is a businessman from Canfield, and his wife Jean, have

[5:47] pumped in a lot of their own money to restore historic two historic buildings

[5:53] along the along the waterfront.

[5:56] And it is here where

[6:01] he wants to take an old building that was really

[6:06] earmarked for the wrecking ball at one time. There was serious discussion about

[6:10] raising it and he said, "Wait, there's still some good bones in this thing."

[6:15] And when I visited him visited him a few weeks back at the site, he had gutted

[6:22] most of the inside of this old building and is now preparing to turn it into

[6:28] three condominiums overlooking the Mahoning River. So, it's really got this

[6:33] wonderfully scenic panoramic view of the Mahoning as you walk out on on this deck

[6:38] that extends into the out of the back near the near the

[6:44] bridge. And it really gives you a nice panoramic view of

[6:49] what the Mahoning is today and it's really strikingly beautiful.

[6:54] So, a number of hundreds of thousands of

[6:57] dollars he's pouring into this particular project right now. It may go

[7:01] much higher as anybody in the construction industry will tell you that

[7:06] it doesn't always fit fit the initial budget and there's probably going to be

[7:11] higher costs associated with it. And next to it is another building that he

[7:16] wants to turn into a cigar bar and a small diner if you will

[7:24] or a small place where you could get hamburgers and and and food like that.

[7:31] And again, using the river as that major

[7:35] amenity as this also backs up against the river, building decks out where

[7:40] people can enjoy a nice scenic meal overlooking free-flowing Mahoning River

[7:46] now. And that is largely been a draw to any other city that that you see. I

[7:52] mean, a lot of the river cities have used the river as that central amenity

[7:57] in order to draw attention and to draw patrons to specific businesses, which is

[8:02] what these investors want to do.

[8:06] Did he mention a timeline for either of the projects?

[8:08] Yeah, it looks like they're going to be finishing up sometime in the spring of

[8:12] 2024. So, the spring of this year. Oh, okay. Okay.

[8:16] uh some completion uh completion with the

[8:20] restaurant, he believes, and uh fairly soon

[8:24] uh by by March or May, the condominiums. Uh

[8:30] and it was they were moving along pretty quickly

[8:33] when I was uh when I visited them a few weeks ago, so.

[8:37] And and you also talked to another private investor, Ray Carlson.

[8:40] Yeah, Ray's been investing in Louisville for years.

[8:43] Right. Uh and and his story is is quite

[8:46] interesting. As as a pharmacist, he had moved to Louisville and wanted to start

[8:51] a pharmacy of his own. Didn't quite work out. Uh

[8:55] this is many years ago, uh but he was really endeared to Louisville uh itself.

[9:02] He lives in Poland Township out outside of the city

[9:06] of Louisville, but nevertheless has always felt that this community would be

[9:11] perfect for small-town development. So, he began by

[9:17] establishing a um

[9:21] uh an administrative and extended operation of his business,

[9:28] which is RC Compounding, and he bought an old bank, restored it,

[9:34] and now that's RC Compounding on Water Street in in um in Louisville.

[9:41] Uh he also invested in uh the famous Scarselli's restaurant uh

[9:46] which was destined to close at one point and he believed that well, I don't think

[9:52] it would be good for the community to lose this particular landmark.

[9:56] Mhm. So he invested money in in in his now

[9:59] restored put some more restoration into that particular building

[10:06] and now that is uh is is is active today as well he purchased some other older

[10:12] structures in the village and has turned two of them into Airbnb's

[10:20] one of which has a uh

[10:23] golf simulator in it and a pool table. So

[10:26] Right. folks who will really want to enjoy the

[10:28] small town atmosphere in Louisville Swing Club or something like that or

[10:33] Carlson Swing Club I think. So he's invested money in into these buildings

[10:38] and uh his latest project is taking an old furniture building

[10:44] and restoring that into a uh private events center

[10:50] that could also act as an extension of his own business but also host certain

[10:57] events and parties and so forth on on Water Street as well and uh you know

[11:02] he's sinking a lot of money into the audio visual

[11:07] amenities in this particular place which really sound quite quite good. I mean he

[11:13] wanted to one of the best sound systems in in between here and uh

[11:18] in the House of Blues in Cleveland but it's uh

[11:22] it's a $100,000 or something like that.

[11:25] he's put a lot of money into this particular sound system so bands can go

[11:29] in there and actually record and they they can record their live

[11:33] stuff or or whatever they want to do. It could act as a big recording studio as

[11:37] well. So, he's still trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do with it,

[11:40] but he's redone this entire building, and it's uh

[11:47] really coming along. So, the transformation is is really well

[11:51] underway. And there've been a lot of talk about it for years and years and

[11:54] years and years and years, but now it's actually happening. Well, we're going to

[11:57] take a quick break, uh but when we return, we're going to talk about the

[12:00] role of public investment in Louisville's resurgence. So, stay with

[12:04] us.

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[12:39] Dan, before the break, um we mentioned some of the public investment that's

[12:44] going on there. I guess, could you talk about that and how crucial that is to

[12:48] what's happening in Louisville? Sure. Uh a lot of the public investment

[12:52] has gone to the river, of course. Uh the

[12:56] removal of the dams is where the most of uh the money has been spent. Um aside

[13:02] from that, the Louisville has been very successful in getting grants

[13:06] that could open up small business development along, for example, Water

[13:11] Street. A few years back, Louisville received a number of grants, $25,000

[13:17] each for businesses to perform facade improvements,

[13:21] as well as, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars that

[13:27] were allotted to development of the riverfront as well as hundreds of

[13:32] thousands of dollars that were devoted to the riverfront and this will

[13:37] eventually become a uh a nice pavilion that is under

[13:41] construction as we speak. A canoe and kayak launch

[13:48] was added a year or so ago a year and a half ago.

[13:55] And the ambition is to extend this 14 acres

[14:00] further along the river and establish a large

[14:06] riverfront park Mhm.

[14:08] that can accommodate just about anything whether it's frisbee golf or whether

[14:13] it's some other activity that they may have planned.

[14:17] Um so that's a lot of where the public investment is going on right now and all

[14:21] of that comes with matching funds too. So the community has to raise a certain

[14:24] amount of money themselves or the county as well in order to match these state

[14:28] grants and and perhaps federal grants might come their way.

[14:32] Um so with all of this going on, what do you see as the the biggest challenge

[14:37] facing Louisville's revitalization? I I

[14:41] think you need folks to you know use it. Right.

[14:45] You know as we mentioned before there's little over a 1,100 or so residents.

[14:53] So I think the biggest challenge for Louisville is to get the word out.

[14:57] You know why is this community a great alternative than going to the

[15:03] big cities you know bigger cities like Cleveland or Pittsburgh

[15:07] or or even Youngstown or Warren and the argument is and and Mayor DeCianni will

[15:13] tell you this that you know a lot of folks are are enjoying the the small

[15:19] town life. They like to get away and and have a a

[15:23] nice relaxing evening at a place that isn't uh crowded and and traffic

[15:28] congested and and and things like that and places like that. There's been

[15:33] plenty of public investment to support this. There's been infrastructure

[15:37] investment as well that uh was was poured into Louisville and it's still

[15:42] being done there. Um

[15:45] so some of the challenges I think hey, you know, you you really need to create

[15:49] a good marketing campaign and making it a destination spot for folks.

[15:54] Now, there's also talk for other private investment on the other side of

[15:59] the river at least in the opposite end of of of the uh town

[16:05] uh along the river. So, more condo development might be in in the works in

[16:10] the coming years. So, when we see this happen and you really see the physical

[16:17] work underway, um that might convince

[16:22] a lot of folks out there that, you know, this isn't just lip service. People are

[16:26] actually doing things to to rebuild these small villages

[16:32] in the Mahoning Valley. And it looks like Louisville's on the right path to

[16:36] do that. I mean, we've got other small towns and communities that are really

[16:40] struggling with the same sort of

[16:43] of issues. Uh you know, depopulation uh and and and the Mahoning Valley

[16:50] losing, you know, residents uh over the years has has really

[16:55] impacted these small communities especially. So,

[16:59] what Louisville is trying to do is is something really quite interesting and

[17:05] extraordinary for its size especially.

[17:10] Well, thank you very much Dan for spending the time with us today and

[17:13] sharing your story. You can read Dan's story at businessjournaldaily.com.

[17:18] A link is in the show notes. We will be back next Thursday with another episode

[17:21] of the Byline Breakdown. I'm Mike Moliterno.

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Lowellville, Ohio: Small Town with Big Transformation | The Byline Breakdown Ep. 010

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