In early 2010, French owned steel pipe maker V&M Star began building two mills where the Briar Hill works had stood on Youngstown’s northwest side. They were the first new mills in the Mahoning Valley since early last century.
This week, the company signed a 99 year lease for the last 200 acres of the project. Youngstown Mayor Charles Sammarone said that “The property there, a lot of it was old steel mill property that we owned. And it’s all part of the economic development plan that we’ve been working on with V&M and the city of Girard. It’s kind of a cooperation between two communities, Girard and Youngstown, and working with V&M.”
The lease will pay the two cities about 8.5 million dollars over the next three years, and one-hundred-thousand a year thereafter. Construction of the mills themselves is done and the first seamless tubing rolled out in October. Full production is expected by spring. V&M is expanding to serve the shale gas and oil drilling boom in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
