In 2007, when Turning needed to expand, it considered moving its headquarters to the suburbs of Youngstown. The city imposes a 2.75 percent income tax on everyone who works within its boundaries, and parking downtown can be a hassle for Turning's largely suburban work force. "But we took an informal poll, and 95 percent of our workers said they liked working downtown," says Broderick. "There's an energy, a hope."
Now Cossler is trying to create Youngstown's next Turning. In a struggling city, he is a sort of kingmaker. About 20 people approach him every month, trying to secure space in the incubator by pitching ideas for products. Many of the ideas are just plain bad -- "they tend to self-select out," as Cossler gently puts it -- but still, Cossler always speaks as though he is surrounded by geniuses on the cusp of greatness. He describes Zethus as "a company whose deep and leading-edge knowledge of cloud computing may just revolutionize how we manage our electronic data." Founded in 2003, Zethus makes a platform called cumulus::DocumentMatrix. One of Zethus's neighbors at YBI, BizVeo, makes an online platform that medical patients can use to download, say, medical-history forms or streaming video of their doctors discussing the nuances of open-heart surgery. The company just made its first sale, to a local hospital.
YBI's off-campus companies, combined, grossed just shy of $60 million last year, and some have a deep history. Still, it seems that Cossler's main job is cheering up a city with bad-self-esteem issues. In one open letter to the YBI community, he sounds an almost therapeutic ring, calling the incubator "a shining example of how disbelief in ourselves can and must be overcome throughout Northeast Ohio." He wears a short-sleeved YBI polo shirt virtually all the time, even in winter, and in his talks with young inventors, he taps their potential deftly, with the indulgent patience of a good Little League coach.
One afternoon, I sat in as Cossler met with a 28-year-old photographer, Rasul Welch, who wants to fabricate and sell "follow focus" hardware that can facilitate video shooting on DSLR cameras. Welch's business partner was a half-hour late. And as we all waited for him, Welch slumped in his chair. He was impressively schooled on camera technology, but he seemed a little casual for a guy on thin ice. "Charles is a young buck just off the boat from Dubai," he said of his straggling mate. "He went to the University of Cambridge, in England." He admitted he had done only one casual market study for his mount: quizzing five photographer friends about his concept. "Four of them hated it," he said.
Cossler had a flash of doubt. "Just because your mom and your girlfriend like your idea…" he began. Then he changed tack. "I like you guys," he said, after fabricator Charles Beal finally showed. "I like your pedigree. You have nice skill sets." A moment later, he was offering the inventors access to YBI's Inspire Lab, a set of two ground-floor conference rooms shared by about 20 start-ups so germinal that they are just tinkering, nights and weekends. He also offered the gratis aid of a lawyer who could help the inventors incorporate. "We could go to work for you tomorrow," he said.
"But," said Beal, "I don't know how we'd create jobs for Youngstown."
"Don't worry," Cossler said. "We'd morph you along so you did. Say you wanted to create software for DSLR; we'd find you programmers."
As the inventors left, they were envisioning software that could aid video editing. Seven weeks later, they began working in the Inspire Lab.
Urban theorist and author Richard Florida has identified what he calls the "three T's" of economic development. Florida argues in his 2002 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class that urban areas need "talent, technology, and tolerance." By tolerance, he means venues that embrace "cultural, entrepreneurial, civic, scientific, and artistic creativity." Cool hangouts, in other words: museums, microbreweries, experimental theaters, and research labs.
In those terms, Youngstown could go either way. The ruined steel mills hold a certain rust belt chic, and when I was there, I met artists and writers who had come back to the city, enchanted by the pathos and romance of the place. There is a splendid new café on West Federal Street -- the Lemon Grove, where the walls are hung with paintings from local artists and the floors are made of planks salvaged from an old barn. There is an old-school museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, that boasts Edward Hoppers and Georgia O'Keeffes in its permanent collection, and there is also a gay advocacy group, Pride Youngstown. Youngstown State University, which sits on a hill above the downtown area, is a big and important presence. But Youngstown is -- let's face it -- not the sort of place where U2 is going to kick off its next tour. It is a small town, more homey than cosmopolitan, and it is trying to fight its way back from a haunted past.
Skeptics hold that Youngstown could be damned by its history. Heike Mayer, a professor of urban planning at Virginia Tech, notes that Youngstown has no track record with high tech. She adds, "You can't create 5,000 jobs out of nothing. You have to connect to what's already there, historically. Pittsburgh did that. It was a steel town, and it built highly specialized steel-technology firms. But Youngstown, I don't know."
