Staff photos / R. Michael Semple The people representing the organizations involved in bringing this major milestone for advanced manufacturing to the Mahoning Valley took part Thursday morning in the traditional groundbreaking for the Youngstown Business Incubator’s 107 Building. It is being transformed into the Youngstown Innovation Hub for Aerospace & Defense.

YOUNGSTOWN — About a year from now, Barb Ewing hopes to have additive manufacturing companies move into the new Youngstown Innovation Hub for Aerospace & Defense, located downtown in the former Vindicator building.

Thursday was the symbolic shovel-turning in front of the 130,000-square-foot structure that formerly housed The Vindicator newsroom and printing facilities. Remarks by Ewing and many local leaders took place from a tent in the parking lot.

Among the topics many local officials talked about was how hard they worked to raise the matching funds needed to turn the hub into a reality. One of the speakers was Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Department of Development, which provided key funding.

She said the agency “knew how much of a catalyst” the Ohio Department of Development’s investment into the hub “could be.” She said the hub “is not just about business. It’s giving people a chance, an opportunity to, as (Gov. Mike DeWine) likes to say, live up to their God-given potential.”

She said the innovation hub will provide people with “something to shoot for. And that is what you have done here as a community. You are taking care of each other. You are looking out for that next generation. And you are going to achieve some incredible things.”

She said “When we look back on this in 10 to 20 years, when we are celebrating all of these incredible achievements that are happening out of this innovation hub, you are going to be very proud and very grateful that a group of community-led and community-minded people got down, put their shoulder into it and never gave up.”

Ewing is CEO of the Youngstown Business Incubator, which will oversee the new Innovation Hub, along with YBI’s other downtown facilities, all located close by, including the Vindicator’s other former downtown building and America Makes, also just across Boardman Street from the new building.

The Innovation Hub is funded with $26 million from the state’s Ohio Innovation Hubs Program, which was “designed to make Ohio a national leader in innovation,” according to the Ohio Department of Development website. The goal of the hub is to create new jobs and business opportunities “by supporting world-class research in industry-aligned platforms that build on Ohio’s existing legacy industries and research strengths,” the website states.

The state program has also funded innovation hubs near Toledo, in Dayton, in the Akron area and gave planning grants for the Athens and Piketon areas.

Known more commonly as 3-D printing, additive manufacturing is the process of creating three-dimensional objects one layer at a time.

Ewing said Thursday the entire cost of the hub is about $30 million with $11 million in-hand now with “probably another $10 or $11 (million) in play right now.” A little less than $5 million was the local match, she said.

Other funding sources were a state capital appropriation of $750,000, the city of Youngstown providing $1.35 million, $200,000 from the Mahoning County commissioners and $1.2 million from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) program funded by the federal government to aid in economic development.

ODNR Director Mary Mertz explained Thursday that the Youngstown area qualified because there were more than 270 coal mining sites in Mahoning County in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Ewing said roofing renovations will take place on the Innovation Hub this summer, as well as some demolition, and renovations to the building will begin in the fall. “We are rebuilding the infrastructure inside,” including heating, ventilation and air conditioning, Ewing said.

The building contains open spaces where the printing presses were and offices that will need to be “built-out.” The electrical service needs to be upgraded, Ewing said.

YBI’s existing additive manufacturing facility is full, so the new space will provide space to continue to add companies, Ewing said. The new building can accommodate larger spaces and is twice as large as the existing manufacturing building, “so we can have bigger companies adding more employees and bigger pieces of equipment,” she said.

The U.S. Department of Defense, now known as the Department of War, is “really investing heavily in building the military supply chain, so this is a golden opportunity for companies to get into the defense industrial base,” Ewing said of the Innovation Hub. “Two of the driver industries of additive manufacturing are defense and aerospace,” she said.

Additive manufacturing is “a great technology for low-volume, high performance types of production methods. So (defense, aerospace and additive manufacturing) just align very well. It really is an ideal opportunity,” Ewing said.

She is projecting about 150 people will work in the new building. Additive manufacturing requires advanced training, “a good understanding of computers and advanced manufacturing technology, and those types of jobs pay well,” Ewing said. She estimated the average wage in the new building will be about $80,000 per year.

“That creates a lot of wealth in this community,” she said, referencing remarks by other speakers at the event about the “golden days of the steel industry,” when wages in the steel industry were high, and it created a “very wealthy community.”

In Ewing’s prepared remarks from a podium, she said the true “fresh start” for Youngstown was in 2012, when the ribbon was cut for Youngstown’s National Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Additive Manufacturing, also known as America Makes.

She said Youngstown has faced many challenges over the years, but “For the first time in decades, our economy and population are actually growing. And for me, this project (the hub) is just one more piece of evidence that we really did begin again 16 years ago.” She said the hub “will make us the envy of our peers.”

Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said Thursday that 2012 was important for the entire state.

“At the time, we were the 34th-ranked state in the country for people to consider coming here to open a business or to expand a business or even think about whether their business was going to stay,” Tressel said.

Tressel was referencing CNBC recently calling Ohio the No. 1-ranked state for business. CNBC looked at factors companies consider when making site selection decisions, according to the CNBC website.

Then-Gov. John Kasich and the General Assembly created the Jobs Ohio economic development organization. And it has led to events like Thursday’s shovel-turning, Tressel said.