Trusting the Process

Traditionally, the primary mission for the Regional Growth Partnership has been attracting new business and investment to Northwest Ohio as well as helping existing businesses with their expansion projects. While that certainly remains true, Northwest Ohio’s lead economic development organization is also expanding its services to assist local partners in their planning efforts.

The RGP’s Gary Thompson describes this undertaking as a customized process designed to prepare communities to win investment and job creation.

Thompson, who leads business development at the RGP, has been helping communities better prepare for attraction and growth opportunities. In meeting with jurisdictional leaders throughout the region, Thompson is prompting officials to truly ask the types of development they and their community want. Do they understand the benefits and downsides of the different types? Do they actually want development? Once those initial questions are answered, the RGP then helps drive communities toward preparing and ultimately attracting such investment.

Northwest Ohio presents many advantages to businesses seeking new locations, including transportation infrastructure, workforce, proximity to market, energy infrastructure and capacity. Thompson said this process he brings is designed to help identify where those capacities line up with available land.

Thompson emphasizes it’s not just having a site. The process includes land control, pricing, utilities, appropriate zoning to meet desired development – all necessary considerations which must be addressed. “Once you have all that, now you have a site to market,” Thompson said.

Communities able to assemble large acreages of land will position themselves for even greater opportunities to attract unique and rewarding developments in such industries as data centers and advanced manufacturing as well as future tech-growth industries like chip manufacturing and quantum computing centers.

“But you have to be ready to win now,” Thompson tells communities. “You can’t say ‘we’ll have that assembled in a year.’ That won’t work. Companies will go to the next location.”