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Friday, June 24, 2022

Remember as a child trying to learn the difference between “electric” and “electronic,” two words separated only by that “ON” switch in the middle? Today — with a surge in EV demand and a shortage of semiconductors — they are the two most operative words in the automotive industry. How they twist together to alter the DNA of mobility is a story best told by an array of projects now flipping the “ON” switch. The billions of dollars in investment are coming in big chunks: Rivian’s $5 billion in Georgia; Mercedes’ 6 million sq. ft. in Alabama, Ford’s planned BlueOval meg...

Investors Help to Transform Downtown Springfield, Attracting New Businesses & Visitors

Monday, May 23, 2022

James (Jim) Lagos and his wife Nike have invested heavily in the revitalization of Downtown Springfield. “You have to take a chance on the community,” he said. “That’s what we have done to try and restore Springfield to the level of glory it once had.” As a result of investments made by them and others, Downtown Springfield has once again become a vibrant hub of activity that is attracting people to dine, shop, work and live within the downtown area. The Bushnell Building renovation was one of their biggest projects. Built in the late 1800s, the building was home to Wren’...

The GSP’s Advocates for Our Business Locally & Legislatively

Monday, May 09, 2022

The Greater Springfield Partnership advocates for over 800 companies who call Clark County home. Our services are comprehensive and range from talent acquisition and development support to site selection, funding solutions and legislative advocacy. “Ohio is an excellent state to do business in. The legislature is willing to listen to the concerns of businesses and to take those concerns into consideration when passing legislation. Our job is to make sure that Clark County businesses have a seat at the table, that their voices are heard and that laws are passed that benefit our businesses and the employees who work there,” sai...

The Conscious Connect strives to improve equity and inclusivity

Friday, April 29, 2022

Karlos L. Marshall remembers as a kid gazing at his mother’s series of books about the achievements of black people who made history. He read them and aspired to be like them, even before he could understand just how great the subjects really were. When he and friend Moses B. Mbeseha co-founded The Conscious Connect and began distributing books to children who needed them, his mom mailed him that same series, comprised of dozens of books. They were the first that were given out. Read full article.

Growth of IndieCraft music festival a driver for tourism, continued expansion

Thursday, April 28, 2022

With the third IndieCraft just about two months away, the wider reach of the once one-night indie music and craft beer festival can be felt in the expanded venue space, the sought-after talent and the buzz both among the Greater Springfield community and people from other cities and states. “When we first started talking about IndieCraft about 4 years ago, we wanted it to be like the idea of South by Southwest in Austin … that was always our template,” says Chris Schutte, vice president of destination marketing and communication for the Greater Springfield Partnership. “We didn’t want to charge becaus...

Alcony Weavers brings a colorful mix to Downtown shopping

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

A new, brightly-colored view popped up along North Fountain Avenue in Downtown Springfield recently. Alcony Weavers opened its doors in the first of three storefronts along the Park at the 99 garage, with the other two spots soon to house Charlo’s Provisions & Eatery. The shop is a first for owner and operator Spensir Robinson, who has run the business online and through trade show set-ups for the past few years. Read full article.

Springfield Downtown Historic District more than just for show

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

A building or district doesn’t need to be officially recognized as historic to prove its value to the community. But recognition from the National Register of Historic Places does have its perks, says Kevin Rose, director of revitalization for The Turner Foundation. “It’s really about saying, ‘This is a landmark. This is important,’” he says. Read full article.

Clark State named a top military friendly school for fourth year in row

Monday, April 25, 2022

Clark State College has been named as one of the Nation’s Top Military Friendly Schools for the fourth consecutive year, according to a release from the school. “Supporting our veteran and military student populations continues to be a top priority for Clark State,” said Diana Seaman, registrar. “We are so excited that Clark State was awarded Gold this year as a Military Friendly school.” Read full article.

University of Dayton wins national supplier diversity award

Friday, April 22, 2022

The University of Dayton has received the Jesse L. Moore Supplier 2022 Diversity Award, a national recognition from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine honoring colleges and universities that take proactive steps to support and engage with minority-owned businesses. The publication selected winners for their efforts in recruiting, hiring and retaining suppliers from underrepresented groups through institutional supplier diversity offices, innovative programs and other initiatives. Winners will be included in the April 2022 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. Read full article.

Northeast Ohio seeks $75 million 'Build Back Better' boost for manufacturing, polymers

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Northeast Ohio is putting itself in the running for a $75 million infusion of federal cash intended to boost economic development, including growing a polymer industry cluster in and around Akron. A proposal aimed at securing the funding is now being polished and finalized, focusing on smart manufacturing and advanced materials and centered around eight projects with a strong diversity and inclusion theme. The goal is to improve the regional supply chain and economy while addressing structural inequities that cause individual and community distress. Read full article.

Innovation hub celebrates one-year anniversary at Dayton Arcade, plots future growth

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

The university-anchored innovation hub that jumpstarted the Dayton Arcade revitalization is celebrating a major milestone as it works to add new programming and partnerships to its existing slate of offerings. The Hub Powered by PNC — a joint venture between the University of Dayton and the Entrepreneurs’ Center — recently held a ceremony to mark its one-year anniversary in downtown Dayton. The Hub had an impactful first year as an incubator for local entrepreneurs and businesses, a place where students could take courses and gain hands-on experience in new ventures, and as a catalyst for the redevelopment of the downtown landmark. Rea...

Cast your ballot now for Inno Madness round two!

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Queen City? More like Upset City. That’s right, folks: Not one higher-seeded company from Cincy Inno Madness made it through to round two. That means the highest-ranked companies we have going into this week’s voting are No. 5 seeds, including Pay Theory, Hearty, Peerro and Homebuyer. Read full article.

Why Economic Developers Should Enter The Metaverse

Monday, April 18, 2022

Retailers from Samsung to Disney are buying 'virtual real estate' sometimes in the millions of dollars to have a presence in the metaverse. Make no mistake, the metaverse is going to be huge and it will happen much faster than the dawn of websites, social media, and smartphones. WHY JOIN THE METAVERSE NOW? Economic developers should enter the metaverse because if they don't - they, and their communities, will be left behind. Put simply, economic developers cannot afford to sit back and watch as the metaverse becomes part of people's everyday lives. Take, for example, workforce attraction. People looking for a ne...

Creating Workforce Ambassadors Will Make Talent Attraction Easier

Friday, April 15, 2022

Making talent attraction easier, and more effective is top of mind for many economic developers and the businesses they support. Talent attraction has been a challenge post-pandemic, whether that means getting people already in the community to work at their highest potential or attracting talent from outside of the area. Golden Shovel Agency works with clients from throughout the country that has put in place successful workforce recruitment programs. THESE BEST PRACTICES can be implemented by any community, but most require some level of funding. What if you don't have any? Read full article.

Use This Innovation Philosophy to Build a Better Product Every Time

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Have your team been in a situation where you invested a lot of time and resources in building a product that ultimately didn’t work for users? Most product teams have been there at one time or another, but happily there are multiple ways of avoiding this situation. One is investing time and effort in market research — and only after that building a prototype of a product — because it’s simply not true that startups and small businesses don't have enough resources to conduct solid research. So, how should they go about this? The answer, in my experience, is to practic...

This Secret Weapon Will Convince Investors to Fund Your Startup

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Investors are busy people, and many have seen thousands of pitch decks in their careers. They ultimately choose to invest in very few, however, regardless of how interesting some might seem to the average person. The truth is that a good idea isn’t enough; it’s only part of the equation. It’s necessary to convince an investor that you have the right idea, that you’re the right person and that this is the right time. That last factor is vital: Venture capitalists won’t invest in something which seems to have little urgent need in the world, and wouldn’t have gotten to wher...

35th Annual Corporate Survey: Effects of Global Pandemic Reflected in Executives’ Site and Facility Plans

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

The challenges faced in 2020 were unlike any other confronted in our lifetime. The global pandemic wreaked havoc on our personal and professional lives and the U.S. and global economies. The Commerce Department reports that U.S. GDP declined 3.5 percent in 2020, with the economy falling into recession in February 2020 — a month before the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. The 3.5 percent decline is the worst year for the U.S. economy since at least the end of World War II, as reported by CNBC. Read full article.

17th Annual Consultants Survey: Consultants Are Optimistic About the Year Ahead

Monday, April 11, 2022

Profile of the Consultants Survey Respondents At least 80 percent of those responding to our 17th annual Consultants Survey work with manufacturers of durable goods, with some of these consultants also working with other manufacturers, and three quarters are working on distribution/logistics projects. Nearly half represent clients in data processing/computer-related sectors as well as finance/insurance/real estate. About 70 percent of the respondents work with companies that are large in terms of their employment numbers, i.e., 500 employees or more. Since 74 percent of those responding to our 35th annual Corporate Survey represent firms with fewer than 500 employees — and only 2...

The 2021 Top States for Doing Business Reflect Their Locational Advantages

Friday, April 08, 2022

When we last took stock of Area Development’s Top States for Doing Business, it was a bit hard to gauge what “doing business” was even supposed to look like. In 2020, the country was riding one wave of COVID-19 after another, mixing times of turmoil and concern with ripples of reassurance and optimism. A year later, the country has undergone significant economic recovery, followed by another time of coronavirus concern. Still, amid the roller-coaster ride, there have been some significant high points and positive business headlines. Plenty of companies continue to grow, some of them dramatically, and with growth comes th...

Front Line: U.S. Automakers Look to Semiconductor Partners

Thursday, April 07, 2022

Covid-19 has resulted in wild gyrations in the supply chain with the hard-hit semiconductor industry having a major impact on U.S. auto manufacturing. From its beginning, Covid-19 resulted in auto plants closing around the country while sales of computers and other consumer products skyrocketed. When automakers resumed production, they found fewer chips available to them. In addition, the pandemic and related supply-chain problems depressed sales and drove up prices for new and used cars. However, market analyst IHS Markit sees U.S. auto production stabilizing in 2022 and attributes this to a stabilization in the semiconductor supply chain. Read full article.

Innovation Corridors Have Economic Assets Driving Business Growth

Wednesday, April 06, 2022

It’s no secret that the recipe for economic success usually includes generous portions of innovation and technology. That has been part of the economic development story for many years in such places as Boston, Seattle, the Research Triangle, and Silicon Valley. But just as you can find more and more cutting-edge restaurants and exceptional craft breweries in sometimes surprising places beyond the most obvious locales, the innovation-based recipe for success is being served up in smaller communities, too, far beyond the places that may first come to mind. When it comes to building an innovation corridor or innovation district, the traditiona...

The Labor Challenges of Site Selection

Tuesday, April 05, 2022

You’re evaluating a new site. It checks all the boxes when it comes to the property, local infrastructure, and business climate. You have one more box to check — labor supply. You’re presented with a hodge-podge of numbers. How can you make sense of it all? And what’s the bottom line? Understanding Labor Data, Availability Before considering the outside numbers, you first need to understand your own data. You should know how many workers you’ll need by job title as well as the estimated wages you can budget for each. Labor data are typically available by occupation, so you’ll want to translat...

Driving Into An Electric Vehicle Future

Monday, April 04, 2022

It seems like the ultimate good-news story. The shift toward electric vehicles will greatly improve the long-term climate health of the planet. It’ll improve human health, too, by reducing pollution. It’ll create thousands of jobs in new industries, with new manufacturing operations lifting local economies. What’s not to like? Don’t forget that disruptive technologies are, well, disruptive. One person’s opportunity, one community’s economic development win, quite often means disruption for someone else’s livelihood and some other community’s economy. The story is only starting to unfold, but the transition to electric vehicles, or EVs, is shaping up to be the automotive industry’...

An Evolving Incentives Environment

Friday, April 01, 2022

For nearly two years, the predominant COVID-19 driven incentive compliance issue looming over companies has been the difficulty to achieve and report on headcount performance as part of economic development incentive agreements. The evolving workplace landscape precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic adds another wrinkle to this process. With the trend toward remote work — whether a hybrid scenario or fully remote — our clients, particularly those with an office-based workforce, are evaluating their long-term footprint needs. Seemingly nothing is off the table with respect to the workplace, including hoteling models, employer choice models, flex-worker models, or pure remote worker strategies. Al...

Fully Enrolled: Esports and Video Game Programs Power Up on Campus

Thursday, March 31, 2022

The digitizing of the economy is pervasive, whether you’re performing quality control in an automated manufacturing plant; undergoing a medical procedure; operating a container crane at a backed-up West Coast port; launching fabrication of a 3D-printed prototype; or putting the finishing touches on a breakthrough architectural design. Could using our own digits, senses and synapses in the pervasive playing of video games deliver a competitive advantage to a world hungry for IT skills, systems thinking and interdisciplinary creativity? Video game development and competitive esports programs at colleges and universities around the world are counting on it. Read full article.

Fields of Plenty: The Promise of Solar Energy

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Chances are high that if you’ve been traveling around various regions of the United States in the past few years, you have noticed a solar array where one was not previously. I have had a similar “ah-ha” moment. You may have been struck by the fact that there are vast solar developments in more rural areas — where site selection for solar installations is more favorable, land is cheaper and larger land tracts are available. You might be further surprised to see that solar farms are popping up in most regions of the country. It’s not just your region. Read full article.

The 2021 Governor’s Cups

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Site Selection’s 2021 winners illustrate exactly why a per capita Governor’s Cup was added to this annual facilities race with the 2013 Governors’ Cups. The original Cup always recognized the state with the most qualified capital investment projects the previous calendar year. For eight years now, Site Selection has also recognized qualified projects per capita, bestowing an equally prestigious Cup on the state fitting that bill. As this year’s project tallies show, a state such as Kansas that would appear well outside the Top 10 states in total overall projects can find itself atop the per capita ranking with 139 projects...

How States Lure the Big Fish

Monday, March 28, 2022

Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Laura Kelly of Kansas are covered extensively in this issue as the winners of the 2021 Governors’ Cups — the former for total qualified capital investment projects last year and the latter for total per capita projects. The governors of the other ranking states in these facilities races also deserve recognition. All governors are their states’ main salesmen and women when it comes to landing the transformative projects that add billions of dollars to their economies and create hundreds or thousands of jobs. Read full article.

The Rise of the Silicon Heartland

Friday, March 25, 2022

The ink on Intel’s $20 billion investment deal in Ohio was barely dry in January when experts started weighing in on the long-term impact of the deal. Much of the analysis in the press centered on Ohio’s $2 billion incentives package for the $200 billion California-based company, but the ramifications of this project in New Albany on the outskirts of Columbus go much further than that. Read full article.

Why Developers Are Investing in Springfield, OH (Hint: We’re #1)

Friday, February 25, 2022

Developers are investing in Springfield, Ohio, helping to meet our strong housing demand. USA Today named Springfield, Ohio one of the Top 5 housing markets in the country based on the number of people viewing each property for sale and the average days on the market. And, the Wall Street Journal named Springfield, Ohio the #3 Emerging Housing Market and Economic Growth in the US and #1 in the Midwest. Springfield and Clark County have seen a flurry of development activity. DDC Management is one of the lead developers in the county, responsible for the Bridgewater housing development that is no...

Hire an Intern for Your Business This Summer: Post Your Job Openings for Free

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Springfield and Clark County employers can participate in the Greater Springfield Partnership’s summer internship program by posting available high school internship positions. Our team is actively recruiting high school students to fill internship roles throughout the county. Through a combination of advertising and in-person school visits, we are focused on connecting as many students and employers as possible for the Summer 2022 session. To post jobs or learn more about talent recruiting initiatives click here. Why Businesses Should Participate In the Magnify Internship Program The Magnify Internship program is designed to match Clark County high school students with local employers. Employers will b...

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