[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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