Mansfield's Shawshank Economy

All Things Considered featured a piece on Thursday about Mansfield, Ohio, and the tourists it draws as the location for the filming of Shawshank Redemption:

The 1994 prison drama The Shawshank Redemption is a Hollywood rarity, in that it wasn't shot in Hollywood. The filmmakers didn't use New York or Toronto either. Instead, Shawshank was filmed almost entirely on location, in and around the Rust Belt city of Mansfield, Ohio, about halfway between Columbus and Cleveland.
This summer, as we explore the places where iconic American movies were filmed for our series "On Location," we've discovered that often, long after the cameras are packed up and the crew goes home, a film can leave an imprint on a town.
In recent decades, Mansfield has fallen on hard times. Westinghouse, the Tappan Stove Co., Ohio Brass, and Mansfield Tire and Rubber have all closed plants in Mansfield since America's heavy manufacturing boom went bust. The latest casualty: the local General Motors plant, which closed just last year. All in a city of fewer than 50,000. But at least one closure has brought with it a strange bounty.
After nearly a century of use, the Ohio State Reformatory closed its doors on New Year's Eve 1990. The massive prison on the outskirts of Mansfield is a combination of three architectural styles: Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne. If that doesn't mean much to you, let me put it this way: It's gorgeous — and terrifying. Which may explain why Hollywood thought it would make a perfect Shawshank Prison.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies.  I can relate how people will visit movie sites, as I have stopped twice at the Dyersville, Iowa location for the movie Field of Dreams.  Mansfield, like any part of Ohio which isn't a bedroom community in a metropolitan area, has struggled with manufacturing job losses.  It's good to see something positive happening there.