For many years, McKeesport, much like a number of other Western Pennsylvania towns, has been known for its quintessential story of economic devastation that happened with the decline of the region's steel industry.

But that image is slowly changing, the city's administrator Dennis Pittman told a town hall full of community leaders, longtime residents, and small business owners last week. Now, he said, this old mill town on the banks of the Monongahela is looking to ingenuity, and a number of new business models for its economic revival.

"The world is flat, and we need to be in the 21st century," Mr. Pittman told an audience of about 200 at an economic development summit. "When you look at where we hope to be in the future, you will see that [McKeesport's economic recovery] has been a success story, so far," he added.

He said that in this post-steel era, one of the new companies anchoring McKeesport's economic revival is Canady Technology.

A small company housed in the Industrial Center of McKeesport, he said, it has the potential to put the town on the world map as a hub of cutting edge medical technology.

Canady Technology, which opened its offices in the industrial park in 2005, is the brainchild of Dr. Jerome Canady, who invented the Canady Catheter during his residency at UPMC McKeesport Hospital in 1991.

The device is a surgical tool used in electrosurgery that directs a beam of energy, created with electrical current and argon gas, to cauterize blood vessels or ulcers or to eradicate polyps and tumors.

However, Dr. Canady, 52, whose patent for the device was granted in the United States in 1993 and in Europe in 1999, said his company has not taken off quite as he expected because he has been embroiled in almost a decade-long patent lawsuit with an American and a German company over the device.

"When we first started, the business was taking off, but then we had to buckle down and fight this lawsuit. That crippled us for a while," said Dr. Canady, a Philadelphia native who came to the Pittsburgh area to study medicine.

In February, he won the patent infringement lawsuits brought against his medical startup by Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH of Germany and Erbe, USA in the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

And now, Dr. Canady is seeking $26 million in damages from Erbe and ConMed Corp. of New York in a lawsuit that started on Monday before U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose.

"These companies tried to kill us because we are a small private startup. Since this lawsuit started, they have cost us between $30 million and $60 million in sales," he said. "They wouldn't dare do this if we were Johnson & Johnson [a major health products and services corporation]."

Dr. Canady, a former clinical transplant fellow at the Yale School of Medicine and UPMC's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, said he still has plans to expand the company once he settles the lawsuit.

"People in town still don't have a full appreciation of what this could mean for McKeesport. We have a chance to create a number of really good, hi-tech jobs," he said, adding that he has always had plans of expanding beyond the 3,200 square feet of office space in the industrial park's historic Brick Shed.

Citing the growth of businesses such as Book Country Clearing House, which will soon expand its McKeesport operations by acquiring another 66,000 square feet of warehousing room, Mr. Pittman and Mayor James Brewster said expansion of existing businesses is a key aspect of the city's economic rebound.

But as McKeesport officials have touted their town's economic successes in recent weeks, some people say change might be happening, but it is not all as rosy as city officials claim.

"Mayor Brewster and his administration have done some positive things for McKeesport. They like to take credit for the good things, but they don't accept responsibility for all the other things they should be doing," said Henry Burke, a lifelong McKeesport resident.

Arguing that all the city's economic development plans are no good if residents don't feel an enhancement in their quality of life, Mr. Burke said one of the issues City Hall has failed to resolve in his neighborhood is the issue of garbage collectors sometimes make their rounds as early as 2 a.m. and 3 a.m.

"We have Waste Management trucks that come around at night, which is against the city's own laws. They are picking up trash when we're trying to sleep and making all kinds of noise," said Mr. Burke, who lives in the neighborhood above Renziehausen Park.

"I have called [City Hall] about this many times, but they have done nothing about it," he added. "The city's own zoning code enforcement officer came and talked to me about it, but they did nothing."

Mayor Brewster could not be reached for comment on this story, but during last week's summit, he was quick to note that amid the town's ongoing economic recovery are a number of naysayers.

"All too often, we get stuck in the negative because people don't know much about what is happening in our city," Mr. Brewster said,

But Mr. Burke said what is not happening, especially with regard to quality of life issues in different neighborhoods, speaks volumes about the priorities at City Hall.

"We have a problem of people parking on sidewalks and some even park big trailers in front of their homes, but when I called City Hall, they told me I was the only one who had complained," Mr. Burke said. "The laws we have as a city should not be a matter of a referendum."