CASTLO News!

"Officials Dedicate Campbell Bridge"

September 20, 2005, Tribune Chronicle
 

CAMPBELL -On the 28th anniversary of the blackest day in region's steel history  the area took what officials called a big step forward with the dedication of a bridge to help revitalize empty steel mill land.

"Economic Development begins today," Campbell Mayor Jack Dill proclaimed from the bridge that links Walton Avenue on the south side of the Mahoning River with former Youngstown Sheet & Tube steel company land on the north side.

The development took a step even before the ribbon was cut on the $4 million bridge when U.S. Rep. Timothy J. Ryan, D-Niles, presented a mock check for $1.6 million in federal highway transportation money to improve the area's access to Interstate 680 at Shirley Road and build roads inside the brownfield site.

Struthers Mayor Daniel Mamula, chairman of the Mahoning River Corridor of Opportunity group, said he already has his sights set on turning a one-lane bridge just east of the Walton Avenue bridge into a two-lane one.

"We're going to leverage this check three or four times" by going after state money, Mamula told Ryan.

Mamula said he expects the State Controlling Board on September 26 to approve $556,000 in Clean Ohio Assistance money to start cleaning up nearby polluted land from coke operations.

Ryan said the bridge and interior access roads form a grand plan to bring century old steel land into the high-tech age. He noted $2 million he obtained for Youngstown State University earlier this month to study a new steelmaking technique called "steel foam" to produce lighter yet stronger steel.

"I can't think f a better place to make high-tech material like steel foam than these acres," he said.

Dill said the new bridge opens up 1,400 acres of brownfield land - land that used to thunder and glow with giant mills that made the Mahoning Valley the steel capital of America.

Much of the land, however, has sat vacant since YS&T shockingly closed its Campbell Works on September 19, 1977, wiping out 5,000 jobs in a single stroke and triggering a domino of closings along the river.

Dill said that day "changed the lives of so many people" as he dedicated the bridge to former steel workers, some of who attended Monday's ceremonies.

The new bridge takes the place of an old company bridge across which steel workers used to walk after getting off street cars at the stop 14, said William DeCicco, executive director of Castlo Industrial Park in Struthers.

Smaller companies - Casey Equipment, Quality Bar, Monroe Steel and Allegheny Heat Treating - have set up shop where YS&T once operated fiery open hearth furnaces at the north end of the bridge.