Regional Economy
Article published January 21, 2004
The automotive industry, not surprisingly, is the biggest business cluster in northwest Ohio, but other substantially large industries may be less well known: petroleum refining and containers.
Those were among the findings released yesterday in a new study aimed at examining northwest Ohio’s industrial base and recommending how to improve economic development efforts.
The Toledo area needs to capitalize on its strengths and determine what base industries it wants to grow, said Neil Reid, one of those conducting the study and an associate professor in the University of Toledo’s department of geography and planning.
"You can’t copy page by page what worked elsewhere. ... We can’t re-create Silicon Valley in northwest Ohio," he said.
According to the study, the largest industry groups in an eight-county area including Lucas are automotive, with annual output worth $9.1 billion; petroleum refining, $3.5 billion; containers, $2.3 billion; transportation and warehousing, $1.4 billion; engineering and architecture, $677 million; and fabricated rubber products, $605 million.
One or more of those groups could serve as a nucleus for economic development, said the professors from UT and Bowling Green State University who are conducting the $365,000 state-funded study.
They presented their preliminary findings yesterday to about 75 people, including boards of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority and Toledo’s Regional Growth Partnership and officials from Toledo, Lucas County, and the area’s universities. The study is six months into a two-year look.
Dr. Reid said an industry cluster could identify common problems and find common means of resolving them, and then the community could try to attract more such businesses.
Michael Carroll, a BGSU assistant professor of economics working on the study, cited several success stories involving industry clusters. They include Britain’s Motorsport Valley, which has firms employing about 30,000 and doing annual volume of $2.5 billion; Denmark’s NorCOM collection of wireless-communications firms employing 4,000; and Sweden’s Aluminumriket district with a concentration of aluminum-processing companies.
The professors are studying industry information from Lucas, Wood, Ottawa, Fulton, Erie, Sandusky, and Hancock counties in Ohio and Monroe County in Michigan. Lucas County companies dominate most of the clusters, but Wood County is dominant in the fabricated rubber products category, and Sandusky County leads in container production, they said.
The study is part of a comprehensive effort to better define and direct the area’s economic-development efforts. Thomas Palmer, chairman of the port authority board and a member of the growth partnership board, promised that by the end of March those groups will have a message for the community to weigh when it considers renewal of the port authority’s levy on the fall ballot.
Another study, being done for $132,000 by a Maryland consultant, is examining the roles of the area’s various economic development agencies. That study, several months overdue, is to be completed next month, Mr. Palmer said.