Masury native is turnpike’s chief engineer | News, Sports, Jobs

Staff photo / R. Michael Semple
Masury native Chris Matta, chief engineer at the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission, explains how a pedestrian bridge, being built behind him, is going to span the turnpike at a new mainline toll plaza under construction in Newton Township. Matta, who joined the turnpike staff in 2000 as an entry-level engineer, became chief engineer in February.

WARREN — Chris Matta joined the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission in 2000 as an entry-level engineer, a job he held for 14 years before he started to climb the staff ladder on his way to becoming chief engineer.

He was appointed to the post in February, just in time to help guide this year’s planned $233 million investment to improve and modernize the 241-mile stretch of pavement across northern Ohio, including a major upgrade in the Newton Falls area.

“I had some really great supervisors throughout my career here who entrusted me and taught me a lot to be able to do this position, and that built my success, and it kind of flipped when I became a manager of staff,” Matta, 50, said. “They’re the ones, my staff are the ones, that made me able to continue to progress upward.”

The Masury native wasn’t in love with civil engineering coming out of Brookfield High School in 1990.

“I guess I had a little bit of interest in roads, in heavy equipment, in infrastructure items, but then it just really came down to crunch time of graduating high school and needing to say, ‘What are you going to do?’” Matta said. “So that (engineering) seemed OK to me.”

“But once I started taking the classes (at Youngstown State University), it became clear that I’m glad I liked this, I’m glad I picked this,” he said.

He co-oped during the summers for the Ohio Department of Transportation on road and bridge projects, further solidifying his career choice.

It was 2014 when he was appointed to oversee the commission’s maintenance operations. Three years later, he was promoted to chief deputy engineer.

But rewind many, many years and Matta was living and working in Charlotte, N.C., right after graduation from YSU in 1995.

“I moved down there without a job … me and friend were just like, you know what, it didn’t seem like the area was progressing (and) we were a little adventurous. We had nothing tying us down, so we said let’s move to Charlotte,” Matta said.

He worked a couple jobs to pay for rent before hooking on with the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

His time in the South was short, however.

“I missed the Ohio area. I missed friends, relatives, you know, the family,” he said. “Just a little over a year, I moved back. At that time I went to work for about a year for a bridge painting company out of Campbell. I learned a lot. It was a great opportunity, but they shipped me out to New Jersey for the most part …”

So it was like he really wasn’t back home.

He left and got a job with a firm that managed construction projects on the turnpike. “That’s when I really started to learn about the Ohio Turnpike,” Matta said.

Matta lives in North Ridgeville now but still has family ties to the Mahoning Valley, where his father, brother and in-laws live. His dad still lives in Matta’s childhood home on Stateline Road, about “20 steps” across the road from Sharon, Pa.

His rearing in the Valley — known for the work ethic and resiliency of its residents whatever the challenge — shaped him as an adult.

“Without a doubt, it all started with my parents and the upbringing I had with them. My mother, she’s passed, but she was an absolute, just a total rock, a go-getter, the best mom you could ever have in showing you the way and everything,” Matta said. “And my dad isn’t any slight from her either. As a family, we went through it. My dad lost his job. He worked for, I think, 25 years as part of the steel industry …”

Matta saw the trials his parents went through, “but you also saw my parents not miss a beat.

“And you learn the same way. Carrying on forward from that, working here at the turnpike for almost 22 years, there has been some difficult times. Changes happen and you wonder; little bit of stressful times, but you push through,” Matta said. “You’re like, I still know what my job is, I’m going to do that and see how things shake down and by the grace of God and what I have been taught by my family and people who I have worked for, it has worked out. It has been great.”

In the role of chief engineer, Matta provides guidance on the commission’s major budget for upcoming capital improvement projects, including budgeting, planning, design and construction. He also oversees operations of the maintenance department.

One of the major capital improvement projects this year is a new nearly $20 million mainline toll plaza in Newton Township. The project also includes construction of highway speed E-Z Pass lanes, often referred to as “Open Road Tolling,” an advance that lets E-Z Pass users who are traveling the full length of the turnpike to travel nonstop at the highway speed of 70 mph.

“Right now we are in the heart of constructing the toll plaza buildings, the toll plaza lanes, the booths and bridge that will cross the turnpike to allow collectors to get across the roadway because we have 70 mph traffic going in between the sets of the toll lanes,” Matta said. “That project will be wrapping up later this year.”

The work in the township is not a new interchange — where vehicles and enter and exit the turnpike — but rather where tolls will be collected. The plaza about 2 miles west near state Route will remain part of the gated system.

The project also includes lesser improvements at the turnpike’s east gate in Mahoning County at the Pennsylvania line.