Youngstown To Gain 500 Call Center Jobs

I know this blog is about Pittsburgh, but I think it's important to build more regional awareness and draw on some of the positive things happening not far away.

The mayor of Youngstown was on c-span talking about how his city is doing and hinted at a big announcement which was followed a few hours later by the news that a large LA based firm would be opening a call center in Downtown Youngstown that may soon employ 500 or more people.

It's only a call center an area known to be easy come and easy go, but still the size of the move is impressive and when put in context even more so. Youngstown will soon have, I think three full buildings downtown full of small start up stage companies in areas like business software development and information outsourcing.

"To hear Mayor Jay tell it, the fact that Youngstown was just named this month by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the top 10 cities in the U.S. to start a business verified the decision to expand their operations to Youngstown.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday restated the fact Youngstown was named one of the top 10 cities in the U.S. to start a business."

Also, not too far to the east is the Cranberry home of Westinghouse, a firm looking to hire at least 700 people to fill it's large Nuclear Reactor backlog.

Can Youngstown build on this and will some of these people choose to live nearby in Youngstown itself? Stiil many challenges ahead.