The demand for metal building materials remains high and growing fast in China and the rest of Asia.

Halfway around the world, the supply to meet that demand is being produced in an unlikely fashion.

While not quite worth its weight in gold, metal is valuable enough to help clear the way for future development in Youngstown, Ohio.

The Campbell Works of the former Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. plant, one of the closed mills in the Midwest that gave rise to the term "rust belt," sat for 30 years because it wasn't worth the time to tear it down.

The steel buildings were an eyesore, and just their presence gave people the false hope that steelmaking might come back, said Mayor John Dill.

But now, with steel building prices of all kinds at historic highs in this country, fueled in part by the demand in China and the rest of Asia, those dilapidated buildings have value.

Before, neither the city nor the building owners had the resources to have the buildings torn down, the first step in redevelopment.

Now, people are willing to pay big money to tear them down and selling the metal building materials overseas.

"It's really ironic," said the mayor.

Those metal buildings, some built back in the 1920s, were constructed by one of the largest steel companies in the world, he said.

It's not only the sheet outside the metal building; inside are huge I-beams that compose the interior of the structure.

With the high price for metal fueling demolition of buildings, which makes way for the environmental assessments needed before land can be developed, the Mayor thinks that the area is slowly starting to see a turnaround.

And, improbable as it may seem, more than a little of the potential for more progress is being driven by high steel building prices.