Each election year voters are asked to rank the issues they are most focused on when deciding who they will vote for. Concerns for healthcare cost continues to be a topic of concern for voters, so it’s no surprise that some of the biggest debates happening in state government in 2020 surround the topic of

The Ohio House is debating creating a new economic development tool to help boost redevelopment in the state. Senate Bill 39 would create a new nonrefundable insurance premiums tax credit for transformational mixed-use developments or TMUD’s. The legislation recently saw a number of changes in the Ohio House Economic and Workforce Development Committee expanding the

Whether you are an employer or are in the economic and workforce development profession, upskilling your existing workforce is a necessity to stay competitive and grow your business. This week, Lt. Governor Jon Husted announced a third round of funding through the Ohio TechCred program will open on Monday, March 2 and run through the

To address a lack of sites ready for industrial, R&D and office projects, JobsOhio is preparing to launch the Ohio Site Inventory Program.  Draft guidelines were recently released by JobsOhio that provided details for what could be the final rules to allocate $50M annually over five years in funding for site development costs.  JobsOhio announced

Driven by a $50B connected devices market, an increase in the use of global use of robotics on average for industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers from 66 in 2015 to 85 in 2017,  Rising opportunities from electrification driven by the expansion of robotics, automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), will drive utilities to play a

The development of robotics training programs will become a central strategy for the retention and attraction of manufacturing jobs in 2020.  Robotics is the new plastics.  The famous line in the 1960’s movie Mrs. Robinson when the young, directionless college graduate gets career advice that plastics is the way to go can now be communicated

Demographic data impacts corporate site location trends, and 2020 will see the start of the workforce impact of Generation Z on the corporate site location process.  Demography is the study of the structure of the population in terms of size, characteristics such as age distribution and education, changes in the population due to births, mortality

Office projects drive economic growth.  However, areas like Downtown Columbus Ohio’s Statehouse Square have office towers with under 50% occupancy and these structures present community economic challenges and redevelopment opportunities.  Fortunately, states like Ohio offer a range of tax incentives and public finance tools to develop office projects.  These tools range from tax abatements to

Reviving Downtown’s with Creative Economic Development Approaches – A Look at DRD’s Does your community have a Downtown rich with history? Do some of those downtown structures still resemble the days when that rich history was being made? Perhaps your community should consider one of Ohio’s newer revitalization programs, the Downtown Redevelopment District, as a