In your itemStateChanged method, you have the following:
Object selectedValue = selectedArea.getSelectedItem();
The getSelectedItem method returns an Object. Then, you call that Object's equals method:
if(selectedValue.equals("Own Specifications")){
This will certainly always return false because the Object equals method is comparing an object of type String to an object of type Object.
Instead, if you want to compare selectedValue to a String:
String selectedValue = (String)selectedArea.getSelectedItem();
Then, the if statement should work as expected.