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Mae West, that sassy, brassy 20th century American actress and sex symbol best known for her pithy platitudes, let loose this one in her 1959 autobiography: "An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises."
She may as well have been talking today to Mitchell Joseph of the M.J. Joseph Development Corp. of California, owner of the much-ballyhooed Chill-Can Beverage and Technology Complex for which construction began five years ago on Youngstown's East Side. After all, Joseph has been sky-high on promises, rock-bottom low on performance in recent years.
About five years ago amid much fanfare, Joseph announced grand plans for a sprawling $20 million research and manufacturing complex in Youngstown for his company's self-chilling beverage can technology. He vowed to create several hundred jobs and rejuvenate a decaying neighborhood. To a city thirsting for cool and promising economic catalysts, Mitchell's pitch struck a nerve. He even sweetened his deals with emotional accounts of his great-grandfather who had started the Star Beverage Co. on the East Side site a century earlier.
Understandably at the time, city leaders and many others in the Mahoning Valley -- including this newspaper -- bought into Joseph's lofty can-do ambitions and promises hook, line and sinker. At the time, its legitimacy appeared solid when work began shortly after the groundbreaking.
Five years later, however, Joseph has little to show for himself except a slew of missed deadlines. He initially had said the project would cost about $20 million and be in full operation two years ago to produce the world's only self-chilling beverage can.
At full employment, the Youngstown campus was to boast about 250 workers.
Five years later, the company has built three buildings on the campus site, which remain largely vacant and undeveloped, and has hired two people.
Frustration over the seemingly endless delays reached a boiling point last month. In late March, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and other city officials rightly put Joseph on notice that he had 60 days to fulfill his promises and hire a minimum of 150 workers, or legal action against the company would proceed.
In the four weeks since that ultimatum was issued, we've heard nary a peep from Joseph and seen no tangible action toward completing work at the East Side property. We'd love to believe that Joseph and his company will rise to the challenge, act expeditiously and make his dream a reality, but like city officials, we remain skeptical.
Though legal counsel for the Chill-Can company cites the COVID-19 pandemic as a major contributing factor for delays over the past year, that explanation fails to acknowledge that the original plans touted the complex would be in full operation in 2018 -- more than a full year before the pandemic even reared its ugly head.
What's more, the gloom surrounding the deflated development is compounded by losses in the millions of dollars that the city of Youngstown has suffered. Indeed the city bent over backward to assist the company in building and developing the campus. Among the incentives were $1.5 million given to Joseph in city water and wastewater funds, about $400,000 to take possession of 15 properties at and near the Chill-Can site and a 10-year, 75 percent real property tax abatement. The company already has received about four years' worth of abatements, saving it about $125,000, according to city records.
Additionally, the project knocked down an entire neighborhood and left some lifelong East Side residents emotionally scarred and scurrying for new places to call home.
Collectively, those hefty financial and human costs the city invested brought forth paltry returns. Those diminishing returns also serve as clear grounds for taking Joseph to court to recoup losses if the company fails to meet the city's hiring and construction demands by May 28.
As Youngstown Law Director Jeff Limbian put it earlier this month, "I think it is unlikely that you are going to see any of the benchmarks met nor anything of any consequence, certainly not in the next 60 days. So, I can picture we will be going to court."
That looming courtroom battle is unfortunate. At best, the likely ill-fated project can serve as a lesson to city leaders to vet developers thoroughly and monitor progress more closely and frequently.
In the final analysis, they must heed the call of Mae West and insist that a pound of promises produces nothing short of a pound of performance.
editorial@vindy.com