Former CSC Ltd steel bar maker industrial site

 industrial area, abandoned / shut down

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Former home of CSC Ltd.

The speciality steel bar maker had a 62-year history in the gray army of buildings on Mahoning Ave.

It opened as Copperweld Steel in 1939, producing iron for the U.S. military. The 1940s and 1950s were glory days. Red dust from the stacks speckled laundry near the mill, but people lived with the inconvenience. The mill meant money - and family: The event of the summer was the Copperweld picnic at Conneaut Lake Park, when kids got Dixie cups of chocolate ice cream and men swatted softballs around the diamond.

The plant's "special bar quality" steel met exacting formulas demanded by auto and machine tool customers. The plant made 800 grades of steel and cornered niche markets not suited for big integrated mills.

But, like much of the steel industry, the bar market became glutted in the late 1970s. Money began draining out, and by 1993 Copperweld filed for bankruptcy protection. Two years later an Akron company, the Reserve Group, brought it out of bankruptcy under a new name, CSC Ltd.

In 1998, CSC began a $100 million modernization of its melt shop. But the ramp-up took 16 months, not four as planned, and the undercapitalized company chewed into its cash reserves.

CSC lost out on government assistance - a federal guarantee on a $60 million private loan - because it never found a bank to make the loan that the government had pledged to back.

Meanwhile, specialty bar production across the country sagged under the weight of 2 million tons of new supply. In the oversaturated market, bar mills toppled into bankruptcy.

At the end of 2000, with its melt shop almost ready, CSC ran out of cash. It filed for bankruptcy protection on Jan. 12, 2001 and stopped making steel April 13, 2001.

Address:
4000 Mahoning Ave NW
Warren, Ohio 44483