As published in the September 1, 2012 Toledo Business Journal
Thomas Blaha
Wood County Economic Development Commission
A guide for economic development
Thomas Blaha recently retired as the executive director of the Wood County Economic Development Commission (WCEDC). Toledo Business Journal interviewed Blaha in an effort to learn about factors that led to some of the major project successes in Wood County during the past 27 years. The Q&A interview that follows provides some guidance on an approach to structuring an economic development PROCESS. (Tom Blaha retired from the WCEDC, but not from being an AVID baseball fan.)
Toledo Business Journal: Can you share your background before you entered the field of economic development?
Tom Blaha: After graduating from Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in 1968, with majors in history, political science, and geography, I accepted a graduate assistantship in geography at Western Illinois University (WIU) to work on my MA degree. While at WIU, I came under the influence of Dr. D.W. Griffin and W.J. Stoll, whose research interests were in urban planning and the geography of manufacturing respectively.
In addition to my Master’s coursework, I completed a thesis under their direction entitled, “Manufacturing Expansion in Small-Medium Sized Midwestern Towns.” Upon taking a job as the first and only full-time instructor of geography at the newly created Carl Sandburg Community College in Galesburg, Illinois, little did I know the role that thesis title would play in my life. After my seventh year teaching at the growing community college, I pursued an opportunity to go on a “US / UK Teacher Exchange” under the Fulbright-Hays Act through the US Office of Education (it hadn’t become its own department yet, it was under HEW).
This exchange took me to Eastleigh, Hampshire in southern England, near Southampton where I found geography taken a lot more seriously than in most US academic settings. During that year, not only did I grow professionally, but my wife of two years and I made a lot of wonderful friends and became confirmed Anglophiles. Upon returning to the US in 1977 (the purpose of the program is cultural “cross-fertilization,” so returning to my US post would extend what I’d learned / experienced to my students and colleagues), Anne and I found ourselves really missing “Old Blighty,” so we kept our eyes open for other employment opportunities in the UK.
The summer of 1978 provided one. A longtime friend (an American from Michigan) who had taken a position as headmaster of The American School in Aberdeen, Scotland phoned and asked how serious we were about coming back to the UK on a more “permanent” basis. Since I had been granted tenure at the community college, it had to be real serious to resign that position and take the one being offered to teach the dependents of American expats working in the “awl bidness” (oil business). We did it and never looked back. We ended up staying in the UK for 7 years this time, buying a house, and having two babies – we felt quite well-served by the National Health Service, I might add.
By 1985, we had lost those teaching jobs, as the lucrative oilfield jobs were transitioning to native workers meaning less need for American expats, which in turn decreased the demand for expat dependent services. Since our “green cards” were dependent on our jobs teaching American subjects at the school, we wouldn’t be able to stay in the UK.
TBJ: How did you get into economic development and what role did the former Private Industry Council and WSOS play?
TB: Returning to the US with a five-year-old son, a three-month-old daughter, and no jobs, Anne and I had no specific “place” to go back to in 1985, the tenured position I had given up in Illinois in 1978 having since been filled by thee part-timers – a foreshadowing of things to come in the education business. Two of my closest friends from undergraduate days at BGSU talked us into coming to Bowling Green.
The late Don Stricker of Fremont, Ohio was CEO of the WSOS Community Action Commission, which had a few months earlier landed a $39,000 grant from the Toledo Area Private Industry Council (PIC) to “initiate an economic development network in Wood County.” The funds were from a federal program called the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), and were intended to be used by local grantees to foster “Employment Generating Services.” They had landed the grant, but hadn’t found the right person to staff it yet. It being July, I found any teaching vacancies had already been filled for the upcoming year, so I allowed myself to be persuaded to apply for the job of administering the grant for WSOS with the strength of the thesis title I mentioned earlier. I went over to Fremont to interview for the job and was hired, the $39,000 grant included my $20,000 salary.
Once hired, my first assignment was to visit the Toledo offices of the PIC. I remember meeting with their contracting officer, who after perusing my resume, looked at me and stated, “I see that you know a lot about other countries, have lived abroad, know geography and education, but what do you know about economic development?” I don’t remember my exact reply, but I often think back to that conversation and wonder which one of us was the rookie, since the things he seemed to be differentiating from economic development are now known as “the global marketplace, workforce development, and quality of life,” and are usually cited as the three pillars of modern economic development. I spent the next eight years speaking at Chambers of Commerce, Kiwanis, and Rotary meetings explaining that WSOS was not a radio station, and building the network of contractors, realtors, utilities, banks, and local officials that would eventually evolve into the WCEDC.
TBJ: Can you explain the most significant efforts that were done to fund the economic development activities in Wood County with both public and private funding?
TB: In January of 1993, the US Department of Labor which was the source of the JTPA funds with which the PIC funded our program – still known as the WSOS Wood County Economic Development Initiative – informed the PIC that beginning in July of 1993, those funds would no longer be available for Employment Generating Services. That meant we had approximately six months to identify and tap an alternative method of funding if we wanted to maintain the momentum we’d gathered over the past eight years.
Private sector business people in the sectors we had targeted in the grant proposal and our incipient program were getting business as a result of our successful activity. To name a few: guys like Bob Mack of Zyndorf-Serchuk, Ted Greene of State Home Savings, Paul Windisch of Huntington Bank, and Bill Brockmeyer of Toledo Edison articulated their desire to maintain the momentum we had developed so they approached the Wood County Commissioners. Their message was that the County had, up until then, been “getting a free ride” in terms of economic development because the modestly successful effort had been paid for completely out of federal funds that WSOS, an entrepreneurial private non-profit, had taken the initiative to pursue on behalf of the County and its communities.
These private businesspeople told the Commissioners that they would fund the private side of a private / public partnership that would pick up the ball and run with it, if the Commissioners could see their way clear to put some County money into the mix. The Commissioners could certainly see the logic, but didn’t know where they would come up with the money. Marilyn Baker, then president of the Wood County Board of County Commissioners knew me, and was familiar with the work and the networking I had accomplished in running the unofficial economic development program in the County for the past eight years.
“Tom, you’re a pretty creative guy, why don’t you do a little research and see if you can come up with a way the County can provide some public match for the private sector funds these guys just promised to raise,” she stated.
Always eager to please, I responded, “Yes Ma’am, Mrs. Baker,” as I left the room. I had no idea of finding a politically correct and “safe” way of locating the green lifeblood that would save my job and salvage the organization we had built from scratch with one hand tied behind our backs.
This was at a time when the most visible economic development organization in our neighboring county was struggling to convince “Joe Six Pack,” as one editorial called Maumee Bay Everyman, to tax himself by voting a levy for their economic development group so that “guys in suits could take other guys in suits out for steak dinners and $14 glasses of cognac.” That solution was never even on the radar screen in Wood County, but it made my research even more difficult.
As luck would have it, while attending a meeting of our statewide professional organization, I met the economic development director of Hardin County who shared with me a way of funding economic development. She explained to me that the State of Ohio enables each of its counties to collect up to $3 per $1,000 (0.3%) of the sale price in a real estate transaction as a fee for transferring (conveying) the title of the property over from the seller’s name to the buyer’s name. Since the seller is the one getting the cash in the transaction, the fee would be collected out of his/her proceeds. This seemed to be the answer – a method by which the County could fund its own economic development efforts without levying a tax on their residents. The beauty of it is that it makes economic development pay for itself – the more property that turns over, the more conveyance fee is generated. After investigating further, I found that Wood County was not collecting the full amount and that there was indeed cap space to add another dollar to Wood County’s conveyance fee.
Upon reporting this to my private sector champions, they re-approached the Commissioners with this successful answer to the assignment we had been given. The Commissioners saw the logic but rightfully sent it to the County Prosecutor’s office to check on the procedure for doing so. They were informed that the Ohio Revised Code did indeed empower County Commissioners to enact such a fee increase, but only after holding two public hearings to “test public support” of same. Those hearings were held in January 1993, each attended by about 70 Wood County residents – with every one of them speaking in favor of the proposal.
After seeing such an outpouring of support (and lack of opposition), the Wood County Commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of adding an extra dollar, specifically to fund economic development, to the County’s conveyance fee beginning in March 1993. This lead-time, combined with the $50,000 that the private sector leaders pledged to raise through memberships ensured that when the JTPA funds stopped coming in on July 1, the Wood County economic development initiative would have a big enough nest egg to sustain cash flow, and momentum would be maintained. The private sector fundraising centered around membership commitments that were being sold by the newly incorporated WCEDC. The WCEDC, incorporated by Paul Windisch, John Cheney, Patrick Kennedy, Kathy Steingraber, and David Weaks, was registered with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office as an Ohio Non-Profit Corporation, and with the IRS as a 501c.(6) “business league.”
To save the new corporation, which consisted of volunteers, from having the overhead and hassle of being an employer, staff continued to be employed by the WSOS Community Action Commission, which contracted with the WCEDC, which in turn contracted with the County Board of Commissioners. Those of you who have attended the WCEDC’s March extravaganza (Annual Dinner featuring Jerry Anderson), will know that this huge event is an anniversary celebration for our incorporation in March of 1993. The arrangements remained this way until January 1997 at which point WCEDC staff became County employees, and WSOS’ role became reduced to that of dues paying member – but always remembered, at least by me, as the acorn from which this now big oak sprang. The bifurcation of public and private funding has remained as a hallmark aspect of the WCEDC, allowing it to function as a business, albeit in the public interest.
TBJ: You have stated on a number of occasions that “economic development is a journey, not a destination.” Can you explain this statement?
TB: A large portion of my answer to this question is contained in the chronology related above, especially number three. Economic development being a journey, not a destination, is embodied in that story, but it is also a corollary of almost every project we’ve ever entertained – even the ones we didn’t “win.” You see, the things we learn, the people we meet, and the relationships we build along the way, become part of our overall approach to the marketplace, which make us more knowledgeable and more competitive.
On more than one occasion, companies or consultants we have worked with on projects that ended up going somewhere else (or not going at all) have come back to us, or referred others to us after having a good experience. This is the one lesson I wish I could demonstrate to every news reporter and every concerned citizen who is eager to see a failure when the project du jour is not landed. In fact, while cleaning out my desk last week, I came across a couple of anonymous letters I had received from a concerned citizen taking our office, specifically me, to task for not landing a project that he didn’t think we worked on hard enough because we didn’t care about his end of the county as much as we did the other end. This too, is part of the journey, which in the long run makes us stronger and better economic developers.
TBJ: Can you identify a project that had the most significant impact on moving economic development activities in Wood County forward?
TB: There have been many signature projects over the years that I have been blessed to be part of. It may surprise you that the one I’m going to choose as the answer to this question is a very successful attraction project of a company that is no longer with us in Wood County. Maybe that just goes to prove the journey vs. destination continuity.
In 1997, a Pennsylvania company named Delafoil was referred to us by two of our private sector members – one a utility company, the other a building contractor. They were a manufacturer of cathode ray tubes and a major supplier to Phillips. We assisted them in site selection and after viewing many sites in many Wood County communities, they picked one that had just been annexed by the City of Perrysburg. We convened a meeting for them with everyone they could possibly need to answer every question they could have regarding everything from building permits, to tax incentives, to utility rates and capacity. I will never forget how bedazzled their CEO was that we were able to get so much done for him so authoritatively in so short a time.
This same model would, of course, continue to be used on other projects with other communities and resulted in successes with many more higher profile projects (most of which I’m happy to say are still with us), and I hope the guy who wrote the anonymous letter referred to earlier (you know who you are!) is reading this.
TBJ: We have learned that the life cycle of some large economic development projects can be quite long. Can you discuss the Bass Pro project and explain its life cycle?
TB: The Bass Pro project started out as an ambitious “what-if” in the fertile mind of one of our longtime private sector members, Brian McMahon. Being the visionary he is, Brian saw the tremendous potential we have in northern Wood County as the crossroads of the three longest interstate highways in the US.
He approached me about the idea of a major user who could benefit from such a well-connected location. He had one in mind – Bass Pro. I had heard of Bass Pro, as my dad used to get their catalogs in the mail. At that time they did business nationally from one location in Springfield, Missouri predominantly by catalog sales, but its one and only location was sort of a folk culture destination like Wall Drug or Rock City among the rugged individualist set.
Brian did his homework and found that the company’s vice president of operations was a guy who had previously worked for the Disney organization in Florida. This, of course, fit right into our hands because we were going to pitch them on the idea of a destination attraction that had 18 million people within a two-hour drive radius, had 90,000 cars a day going by, and attracted several hundred thousand outsiders twice a year for the walleye run and National Rifle and Pistol Matches respectively.
We did the homework on number of hunting / fishing licenses sold, and in so doing got the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife involved as an ally. To make what is already a long story just a little shorter, we travelled to Springfield armed with all our stats, they listened, and said maybe. There ensued some long periods of silence, interspersed with some changes in management at Bass Pro.
Fast forward to 2005, new management at Bass Pro was planting branch stores all over the south and Midwest, while we had been updating our stats (and sales pitch) for the better part of a decade, but they didn’t come here. We even flew them into Columbus to meet with the Governor and the Ohio Department of Taxation. Upon leaving that meeting, the new CEO informed us he saw it as a waste of time, and we eventually twigged onto the fact that there was an issue between the company and the Ohio Department of Taxation regarding catalog sales to Ohio residents if the company had a physical presence in Ohio.
Without getting into the details let me say that with the help of many, including our State legislators, County commissioners, City of Rossford officials, and Wood County Port Authority, we were finally able to land the Bass Pro in 2006. This is the one, that in my 27 years takes the cake as the longest “life cycle,” but let me suggest that the build out or “spin off” we all are anticipating in Henry Township across from CSX intermodal will be shaking out for the next decade or two, and kudos to the Henry Township Trustees, Wood County Port Authority, and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) for being ready to catch that punt and run with it after the hang time. There’s that journey vs. destination theme again!
TBJ: Wood County has had important success in the area of logistics. Can you discuss some of the successes in this area?
TB: In addition to the $175 million intermodal terminal that CSX has built in the southern end of our county, and the flurry of activity we are helping attract to it, Wood County’s strategic location and transportation assets have focused a great deal of our work over the years. The Walgreens distribution facility in Perrysburg Township was one of the WCEDC’s great successes of the late 1990s, the Calphalon distribution center being attracted to Middleton Township, and the overall intermodal initiatives of Jim Jacobs’ various enterprises in Lake Township and beyond bear testament to what I am confident is only the tip of the iceberg.
TBJ: There are important opportunities for industrial development in both northern Wood County in proximity to the Ohio Turnpike and Route 20 and also in the southern part of the County near I-75 and the new CSX intermodal terminal. Can you elaborate?
TB: The crossroads area already mentioned, immediately surrounding the intersection of the Turnpike and I-75 contains over 200 acres of available land appropriately zoned multi-use by the far-sighted City of Rossford. There is a State of Ohio-certified Jobs Ready Site (JRS) on US 20 about two miles south of the Turnpike in Troy Township. Also designated one of only five (so far) “Select Sites” by CSX Rail, this 500-acre site is zoned “planned industrial” and is served by industrial strength utilities in addition to the CSX main north-south line. There are an additional 500 acres owned by the same ready-to-sell owner immediately adjacent to the south for when the next “really big” project comes along. I have already addressed the tremendous potential in the southern end of the county where the Henry Township Trustees have zoned over 1,000 acres immediately across SR 18 from the CSX Intermodal as planned industrial. Our colleagues at the NW Water and Sewer District have obtained another JRS grant to make this “Southwood Commerce Center” jobs ready.
TBJ: What progress have you seen in terms of regional collaboration between Wood County and its immediate neighbors as well other area counties?
TB: Keep in mind Wood County is not a monolith. The first assignment, through the birth and growth of the WCEDC was winning over all (or most) of the five cities, 21 villages, and 19 townships that make up our great county (yes, even including the ones with anonymous letter-writers). That wasn’t easy, but we must have done it, since whenever we get this question it always sort of assumes Wood County as a uniform, act-together place seeking regional collaboration with neighboring constituencies. Since mentioning that, let me publicly thank Harlan Reichle for his comments at the last annual meeting of the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP).
As the senior member of NORED, I would iterate that NORED has been moving in that direction since the late 1980s, but these are practitioners –we’re supposed to act that way. The difficulty is in getting elected officials to “drink the Kool-Aid,” because the currency they trade in is votes, and folks outside their constituency can’t vote for them. Having said that, and knowing some of the scars that I still carry from some of his predecessors, let me say that the emergence of Mike Bell as Mayor of Toledo has not only been a breath of fresh air, but a true step forward in the regional collaboration that will be the salvation of this region. As a retiree, I will be viewing it from my rocking chair, but taking satisfaction from seeing the fruition of something to which I feel I have contributed through my career.
TBJ: Are there any other issues that you would like to discuss?
TB: Just to say thanks to all the friends I’ve made, and the folks who have helped me along the way – I guess 65 is too old to get back into teaching!