Thirty years have passed, almost to the day, since the last blasts of the steel furnaces that were the reason for Monessen, Pennsylvania‘s existence.
The steel mill is gone — used to film “RoboCop,” then demolished. Most of the people are gone, too, and those who remain are struggling to find a new purpose for this place.
In the last week of June 2016, Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came here to declare that as president, he would revive the fortunes of the American steel industry — and, by implication, Monessen.
What Mr. Trump apparently doesn’t know is that about 71 percent of the steel used last year in the United States was made in the United States, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. The mills in Monessen and other cities along the Monongahela River were not replaced by Chinese factories but by smaller, more efficient factories in other parts of the country.
Having lived through that transition, the people here surrendered hope of a Trump-like revival long ago. They are focused on smaller dreams, like scraping together a few million dollars to knock down hundreds of abandoned buildings, which might clear the way for the city to start over.
[Note from Storm: Monessen has apparently forgotten the lessons of the “urban renewal” debacle of the 50s and 60s: “Destroy it and they will come” has seldom worked anywhere. Demolition is a tactic, not a strategy. Without a revitalization strategy, a place loses its historic buildings, but gains nothing in their place. Read this new Economic Resilience Success Guide for more on this subject.]
“We’re dying rather than letting something new grow and move forward,” said Charles Mrlack, 42, who owns a plumbing and contracting business. The problem, he said, is that older residents know that steel is not coming back, but they cannot imagine anything else. “Everybody is just defeated,” he said.
Possibly the town’s greatest success story has come from a company almost as old as Monessen itself, and without any public planning or help. The Douglas Education Center was founded in 1904 as a finishing school for high school graduates headed into corporate jobs.
The school has become a primary training ground for people who create special-effects monsters for movies, thanks to a program created by Tom Savini, a Pittsburgh native, an actor and a renowned makeup artist for horror movie masters like George Romero, inventor of the modern zombie movie.