Bellevue undergoes years of expansion

(Con­tin­ued from last week)

The fol­low­ing year in 1948 the cham­ber of com­merce indus­trial com­mit­tee sub­mit­ted their report at their annual meet­ing. Homer Cre­celius presided at the yearly meet­ing. He told of the planned expan­sion of Belle­vue indus­tries dur­ing 1948 may result in the hir­ing of 380 new persons.

The report said the Nickel Plate Rail­road will need 50–60 skilled men for their round­house and at least 50 other men in the other departments.

Expan­sion at the National Farm Machin­ery, for­merly the Ohio Cul­ti­va­tor Co., will neces­si­tate the hir­ing of some 150–200 men. The new addi­tion to the Spencer-Kellog soy­bean plant will require the hir­ing of 10 more men. Cre­celius noted accord­ing to the report, the Belle­vue Lamp Plant was going to add 60 more women dur­ing 1948.

Admit­ting one of the biggest prob­lems fac­ing the city is of hous­ing. Cre­celius said dur­ing 1947 there were 55 new homes started and com­pleted and 30 more apart­ments made avail­able, at least 100 rental units could still be absorbed at once.

Cre­celius noted future plans of the cham­bers indi­vid­ual mem­bers. W.M. LaSalle urged sup­port for the newly orga­nized Forman’s Club, which meets at the YMCA. R. Hol­lis Math­erly, chair­man of the spe­cial com­mit­tee of the city coun­cil pro­mot­ing Belle­vue Hous­ing Week in the city, explained the aims of the com­mit­tee and out­lined the pro­gram which has been set up to make more apart­ments available.

Leonard Kirtz, pres­i­dent of the Akron Candy Co., said he believed Belle­vue was in dire need of some sort of munic­i­pal park. He sug­gested the Mill Pond would make an ideal spot for such a devel­op­ment. Melvin Sny­der was of the opin­ion that pos­si­bly some of the down­town store fronts could be remod­eled to give the city a more mod­ern appearance.

W.S. Nyerges pre­sented cer­tifi­cates to Belle­vue cit­i­zens who have suc­cess­fully com­pleted a Con­fer­ence Lead­er­ship course spon­sored here by the Uni­ver­sity of Toledo and the State Depart­ment of Education.

They included:

E.P. Anthony, E.L. Blank, E.D. Gar­man, J.D. John­son, N.E. Meeker, L.C. Stan­cliff, J.S. Sweet, C.K. Toll, F.L. Wing, and J.M. Zobec, all of the Belle­vue Lamp Works.

C.W. Folk and H.F. Grote, of the Ohio Pub­lic Ser­vice Co.

H.C. Koser of Pure Ice Cream Dairy Co.

E. Stephens of the Gross Lum­ber Co.

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Belle­vue His­to­rian Bill Oddo writes a weekly col­umn for The Belle­vue Gazette.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.