(rapid piano)
- It's really almost atomic.
There's so many particles that really have to
reverberate through the town, in my mind,
to really bring back the spirit in rebuilding
small town America.
And those pieces are everywhere.
This was a steel town and an industrial town.
- [Man] We had steel mill pumping out with 6,000 jobs.
We had 11 paper mills working.
- They had a fantastic restaurant downtown, dances.
- The streets on Saturday night were teaming with families
walking hand in hand.
- Middletown was an all-American city.
- [Man] Gerry Ford came through Middletown.
Kennedy came here.
- Middletown absolutely was the American dream.
- Starting in the 60's, the city had a flip.
Paper mills were closing down and the big steel mill
also ran into international competition
and jobs starting leaving Middletown in a wholesale way.
The downtown had four or five struggling little businesses
that tried to stay alive
and eventually, one by one, they continued to close.
- When we were growing up, the thing that you heard
people say is that they wanted to get out of Middletown,
that if you grew up here, the way to get up
was in some ways also necessarily getting out.
- I'm a fourth generation Middletownian.
At 17, I definitely felt like I had had my time
in middle American.
I was lucky enough to go to Georgetown and be in DC
and then New York to be an investment banker on Wall Street,
out to LA and worked in Hollywood for 10 years.
Being in the big city felt like the biggest success
of my life because Middletown wasn't a place
you could succeed anymore.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign,
we had journalists from all over the world coming here.
- All they showed was boarded up buildings and ya know,
homeless people and things like that.
- They wanted to see, what is dying America about?
I think that was a misrepresentation of who we are.
I always felt a desire to help Middletown,
especially as I saw things fall on harder and harder times.
We decided, let's move home to Ohio.
Let's make this the place that we're gonna build our lives.
We'd cash in most of our savings to try and rebuild a town.
I knew I wanted to do something with impact.
I spotted a 40,000 square foot, empty,
former JCPenney building that really was
in the heart of downtown.
We've refurbed the whole first floor.
We did all new systems, all new AC,
all new electric.
It's been a big lift.
Do you have your phone with you?
- Yeah.
- Do you know if the WiFi works in Haven?
- I have not tested it.
- Alright, let's see.
We're putting a restaurant called Gracie's
after my grandmother and we've opened a kid's play place.
We've got a hair salon.
This is the upstairs portion of the yoga studio.
- People think this downtown is a waste of time.
We are trying our best to turn that around.
It is kinda like if you build it, they will come.
We opened on a Friday and that day, there was a line
that stood from the cash register all the way across
and all the way out the door.
- It was a risk, it's still a risk.
I love that my children see the American dream
playing out in their lives and that is invaluable.
That speaks to what I saw with my grandparents.
- Ami coming back to Middletown has been
a vital part of our revitalization.
People looking, saying, "Well if she can do it,
"then I can do it."
- Ami can definitely be looked at as a champion
of what can be done when you believe and you put
your heart and soul and energy into it.
- It's the fabric of a small town.
It's that accessibility and connectedness
that makes you feel like you're really part of
where you live.