Jacob Harver just doesn't get it

[jlh3000]

Ron Eiselstein "just doesn't get it." In addition to ripping off young entrepreneurs with his properties in Poland, and his illegal shrimp farms, it is a disgrace how "Anthony's on the River" has exponentially deteriorated under his ownership. He prevented people with actual redevelopment plans from getting the building and now the structure is in danger of being lost. The city should use eminent domain or whatever is necessary to reclaim the property and get him out of the city once and for all.

[kenneyjoe330]

Yea OIL - too bad they didn't discover GRAVITY 

[Youngstownshrimp]

@Rick...............

           Then they discovered OIL

[Towntalk]

I'm happy that there are folks out there that agree with me about Jacob Harver and his fellow travelers, and even happier that there are folks out there that don't feel that the need to go to king harver for his blessing before they invest in downtown Youngstown.

[ytowner]

Harver and this "nut" on Twitter with the name @FakeDomGatta do not get it. (Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/fakedomgatta)


I've gotten into it in some of my tweets with this cowardly individual who loves to hide behind his computer screen, all while ripping on Dom Gatta for investing in Youngstown. I just don't get Harver and this guy.... these individuals do not OWN Downtown Youngstown. Just because the arts community was "somewhat" active in Youngstown when Downtown was in the dumps doesn't mean they have the right to run the shots in Downtown.


What Gatta did in the Federal Building with apartments and V2 is amazing. He will do the same thing with the apartments, coffee shop, and burger restaurant (also run by Vernon's) in the Cedar's building downtown. Anyone ripping these individuals for DEVELOPING Downtown and moving it into the 21st century seriously has an agenda that is not for the overall growth of Downtown Youngstown.


Thank God for the likes of Marcionda and Gatta for actually investing in their hometown and beautifying it. If it were not for them, Downtown would not be where it is today. And guess what, the future of Downtown looks VERY BRIGHT because of them, not because of Harver.

[Rick Rowlands]

Lest we forget the Youngstown of the recent past:

"Once upon a time, Youngstown, Ohio, was a typical smokestack city, part of the steel belt running through Pennsylvania and Ohio.  As with Camden, things there started turning south in the 1970s.  From 1977 to 1987, the city lost 50,000 jobs in steel and related industries.  By the late 1980s, the years of Ronald Reagan's presidency when it was "morning again in America," it was midnight in Youngstown: foreclosures, an epidemic of business bankruptcies, and everywhere collapsing community institutions including churches, unions, families, and the municipal government itself.

Burglaries, robberies, and assaults doubled after the steel plants closed.  In two years, child abuse rose by 21%, suicides by 70%. One-eighth of Mahoning County went on welfare.  Streets were filled with dead storefronts and the detritus of abandoned homes: scrap metal and wood shingles, shattered glass, stripped-away home siding, canning jars, and rusted swing sets.  Each week, 1,500 people visited the Salvation Army's soup line.

The Wall Street Journal called Youngstown "a necropolis," noting miles of "silent, empty steel mills" and a pervasive sense of fear and loss.  Bruce Springsteen would soon memorialize that loss in "The Ghost of Tom Joad."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-fraser/the-archeology-of-decline_b_2231289.html

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to put this part of Youngstown behind us once and for all.  Let's not blow it! 

[Rick Rowlands]

Would ANYONE ten years ago have fathomed in their wildest dreams that there we would have a problem with too much money coming into Youngstown?  Sorry but the down and out days of Youngstown being a low cost dump inhabited only by people who could not afford to move away are over!   Jacob Harver's Youngstown is one in which there is a seedy nightclub in an otherwise abandoned building.  We want fully occupied buildings that are well cared for and establishments that people from the suburbs won't be afraid to go to.  For once in my life I want to see downtown Youngstown that is full of life and full of money!

[Towntalk]

First of all, why should someone willing to invest millions of dollars in a building downtown in order to spend more hundreds of thousands of their own money renovating that building so that they can bring in a store such as Family Dollar or any other retail store have to sit down with Jacob or anyone else in the arts community and get their blessing?

The city needs all the revinue it can get, and this can only come when we see more retail stores come downtown that will draw customers.

As to the complaint about higher rents, who is Jacob or anyone else to tell an investor in a building downtown what they can charge for rental? This is gall in its highest form of gall on Jacobs part.

I'm personally sick of having to go to Boardman to shop and would love nothing better than to be able to hop on the bus and do all my shopping downtown, and that does not include second rate arts goods. When I'm looking for a piece of art, I head off down to the Butler Institute of American Art, and no where else because I know I'm getting top quality goods.

As to stepping out of one's comfort zone ... why should any investor have to make commpromises with anyone?

[Lyndz]

I consider Jacob a dear friend of mine, he is a lover of downtown and the arts, while we disagree in some degrees, mainly cons of gentrification, his concerns are valid and shared by many, especially in the arts community. I think theres is away the arts community and new investors can work together...they both need to be willing to step out of their comfort zones a little and hear eachother out.

[Rick Rowlands]

People complain when neighborhoods become run down when the middle class flees to the suburbs, claiming that "suburbanization" is killing the city. Then they complain when the middle class starts coming back to the city again, now claiming that "gentrification" will kill the city.  Some people just will never be satisfied.

[Towntalk]

 Harver said a primary factor in purchasing the larger building where the Lemon Grove now does business was "to protect against the downtown becoming gentrified."
"You don't want it to get to the point where the people that made this place hip can't afford to be down here anymore," he cautioned.
As usual Harver and his ilk just don't get it, the world does not revolve around his sort of world, nor is he the almighty expert on almighty everything. I would love nothing better than to do 100% of my shopping in Youngstown, but that being said, it doesn't include the items that the arts people peddle. Most of that is junk that I wouldn't give to my worst enemy.

As for the arts remaking downtown Youngstown ... they did it on the public dime, and don't you ever forget it.

Some of us had this discussion several years ago and agreed that what was needed downtown is a good mix of retail businesses and not just artists and lunch wagons with food served up by a gaggle of fry cooks.

If that means pricing the freeloaders out of downtown, so be it. I won't shed a single tear to see them go so long as they are replaced by good retail businesses that offer a wide range of merchandise so that we don't need to shop in Boardman or Liberty any more.