Realm Summer 2024 - The Journal for Queen City CEOs

AN ENGINE FOR GROWTH

GE Aerospace supercharges hiring, talent development, and community support.

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THE JUMP

10 ARTS & CULTURE WELCOME HOME, HARRIET

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House gets a complete renovation and new energy

12 TECHNOLOGY

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP AT TATA CONSULTANCY

The Internet of Things and AI are driving growth in Milford

14 REAL ESTATE HOUSING TRENDS FOR THE REST OF 2024 Cincinnati’s housing market is hot, and developers are trying to keep up with demand

16 ARTS & CULTURE PROST! ON THE RIVERFRONT Rookwood Pottery partners with Oktoberfest to produce new steins

18 LEADERSHIP MAKING BLACK HISTORY EVERY DAY

Hear from this year’s eight Making Black History honorees

PRESIDENT AND

50 ASK ME ABOUT

Get to know Paula Brehm-Heeger of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, Damian Hoskins of Elementz, and City Councilmember Mark Jeffreys, who discusses the return of Red Bike.

52 PHOTO ESSAY: WASTE NOT, WANT NOT AT RUMPKE RECYCLING

Don’t believe the talk that there are fewer uses today for recycled paper, plastic, glass, and metal. Recycling is a growing business sector.

DEEP DIVES

24

GE AEROSPACE IS AN ENGINE FOR GROWTH

The rechristened Fortune 500 company debuted in April and is already impacting the region through hiring and community partnerships. 32

THE CITY’S FUTURE HAS ARRIVED

The Cincinnati Futures Commission offers big ideas. Now elected officials, businesses, and residents will have their say.

38

GROWING A STARTUP POWERHOUSE

New leaders at four key entrepeneurship organizations discuss what’s next for them and for the region.

44

PICKING UP THE PACE AT MADISON SQUARE

Medpace invests in Madisonville and the city at large, with another $327-million expansion on the way.

n early June, the Cincinnati Chamber took more than 70 business and community leaders to Atlanta for our biannual Leadership Exchange. The goal of these trips is to learn, explore, and create stronger connections with one another. While in Atlanta we were able to focus on topics directly related to our strategy of growing population, growing the economy, growing cultural vibrancy, and ensuring everyone belongs here. In many ways, I found linkages to the work we’re doing in Cincinnati right now. But Atlanta had more. More investment, more growth, more housing, and more intentional strategies on belonging. The trip was a jolt of inspiration and motivation to start necessary conversations about the future of our city. And let me tell you, this group is ready to step up and to apply the learnings from the exchange here in our region. Whether that means finding innovative ways to encourage more housing starts, retaining talent through unique partnerships with our universities, or envisioning the blueprint for diverse venues that attract national (and international) competitions, musicians, conferences, and more.

What does that have to do with the summer issue of Realm? Well, what’s inside is a testament to the resources we already have to achieve greater things in our own backyard: Leaders like those we recognized in our annual Making Black History awards; innovative companies like Medpace, Tata, and GE Aerospace; a robust startup scene; cultural assets that are important not to just Cincinnati but our nation as a whole; and a diverse group of individuals (the Cincinnati Futures Commission) who made concrete recommendations that will lay the groundwork to put the city on a path of growth.

I’m pretty pumped. I hope this issue gets you revved up, too. And if you’re so inclined, raise your hand to join us!

BRENDON CULL BCull@cincinnatichamber.com

KESHA WILLIAMS ENTREPRENEUR

THE JUMP

RESTORING THE HARRIET BEECHER STOWE HOUSE OPENS A DOOR TO THE PAST.

Get a jump on news about Tata Consultancy’s work with AI and the Internet of Things, the new partnership between Oktoberfest and Rookwood Pottery, and homebuilding trends for the rest of 2024. And catch up with this year’s Making Black History honorees.

The Cincinnati Futures Commission released its report, A Vision for the Future of Cincinnati, in April after more than a year of work. (Read about the report’s recommendations on page 32.) Much of the group’s research revolved around comparing the 15-county Cincinnati region to peer cities in the Midwest and MidSouth, resulting in suggestions for how we can close gaps with those cities by growing population and jobs, increasing wages, and shrinking wage disparities.

Statistics provided by the Cincinnati Regional Chamber’s Center for Research & Data.

CINCINNATI’S PEER CITIES

[Selected through 15 economic and population criteria]

CINCINNATI IS NOT DENSELY POPULATED [City population per square mile, 2022]

BACK HOME AGAIN

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Walnut Hills reopens to the public July 19-21 after an eight-year, $3.5 million restoration project. Famous as the one-time residence of the Beecher family, including Harriet before she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the house’s later use as an inn and tavern get equal treatment in this update.

20 YEARS OF BEECHERS

The house was built in 1833, and Lyman Beecher and his children lived there through 1852 while he was president of nearby Lane Theological Seminary. Daughter Harriet married and moved with her husband to Maine, where she published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, inspired by her family’s anti-slavery activity in Cincinnati.

ROOM AT THE INN

After changing ownership several times, the house was added on to in 1908 and eventually became a boarding house and tavern called the Edgemont Inn. It was purchased again and renovated, becoming a historic site in 1949.

BOTH SIDES NOW

This top-to-bottom restoration included both the original and the added spaces, depicting the house as it appeared in 1840 (Beechers) and in 1940 (Edgemont Inn, pictured).

WALLS OF FAME

Restoration staff found samples of original wallpaper as non-period fixtures and door jams were removed, and they created new wallpaper to recreate or approximate the originals. Furniture from the house’s two distinct periods is a mix of antiques and recreations.

LOOKING UP AT TATA

Internet of Things and Generative AI projects are sprouting at the company’s growing Milford campus.

–BILL THOMPSON

Things. Is there a more generic word? Or, for that matter, a more descriptive one? “How are things?” “Do your thing.” “You know, that thingamajig.” “I have to pick up some things from the store.”

Things can illustrate situations or items concrete or abstract. At Tata Consultancy Services Delivery Center in Milford, the company is literally bringing things to life at its Bringing Life to Things laboratory, which opened in April.

Konstantinos “Kosta” Elefter has the title of Delivery Center Head but leans on the team instead of making the conversation about himself. “We believe in the ‘we,’ not the ‘I,’ ” says Elefter, who joined the company as strategic business manager in 2017 before taking the top job in 2022. “The community is not just a stakeholder in the business, but the reason for its existence.”

The new lab provides rapid prototyping, experimentation, and implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) and Generative AI (artificial intelligence) projects. For people still amazed that each piece of information in human history is available on their smartphone, Global Head of IoT Operations Brian Purvis explains the difference between the Internet and IoT. “The Internet is connecting one person to the next and connecting them in a web, not just a linear connection,” he says. “The Internet of Things is bringing life to the physical things around us

by interconnecting them and getting them to work together to improve how we do things.”

One of Elefter’s favorite examples is outside his office. “We are bringing things to life in our community garden,” he says. “We have sensors throughout the soil telling us the pH levels or moisture levels so the IoT can coach us on when you need to water or adjust the soil. We have a 3,000-square-foot garden on our property and have donated all the produce we have grown there to community members.”

“We try to bring our global best practices to Cincinnati.”

Whether it’s sensors in the garden or in Ring devices monitoring your home or the

ability to adjust home thermostats remotely, the IoT is an everyday presence. Since it’s science, however, the frontier is constantly evolving. Tata has developed a digital twin of the heart, for instance, where information gathered through wearable devices and sensors is sent to provide real-time analysis of medical conditions. “We talk about practicing medicine, but I don’t like to be the one practiced on,” Purvis says, smiling. “Having concrete evidence and facts on how to treat ailments based on a digital representation instead of a prod or a poke is impactful. It’s about speeding up the diagnosis, because in the medical field seconds count.”

Something else that counts is Tata’s growing presence locally. “We have 1,000 employees here now, a lot of them under the roof,” says Elefter, “but many work at client sites with our customers. We also do a lot of recruiting from local universities. As a 600,000-person global company, we try to gather many of the best practices we have learned and bring them to Cincinnati.” And that’s a good thing.

Kosta Elefter explains it all

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HOUSING

TRENDS

Cincinnati’s housing market is one of the hottest in the U.S., and developers are trying to keep up.

–SARAH M. MULLINS

Cincinnati has topped recent lists as a competitive U.S. housing market. Zillow reported that the region experienced a 7.9 percent yearover-year increase in rent in 2023, the highest increase among all cities, passing Boston, Providence, and Kansas City. Zillow also reported Cincinnati as the second hottest market in 2024 with homes lasting an average of just five days on the market. And the average home value also increased to $240,393, up 8.1 percent.

Rent increases and a competitive housing market mean Cincinnati is in demand, which can be a good sign for the city’s economic development, but it’s a challenging time for those looking to buy.

The city’s Connected Communities program, announced in January, aims to modify zoning and land-use codes to encourage development, density, and equitable growth across the city. The plan could not only increase the overall number of housing options but also allow for the creation of developments that cater to different consumer needs.

While adapting existing properties is always

important, building new homes adds inventory to the Cincinnati market, says Jason Wisniewski, vice president of Grand Communities, Fischer Homes’ land development company. He stays on top of the trends that vary by market. “Most municipalities have a strong sense of identity and want new development to maintain and enhance that identity,” he says. “Fischer Homes is always mindful of working closely with local leaders to create developments that fit the wants, needs, and desires of local communities.”

Wisniewski emphasizes the need for context-specific development, though he knows that balancing the focus on local identity with meeting the needs of buyers and renters presents a challenge due to a variety of trends and interests across the region. He says three key trends and highlights currently shaping Cincinnati’s housing market are building

onto a neighborhood’s identity, utilizing smaller lots, and fighting NIMBY-ism.

Each community across the region has its own identity that Wisniewski says is important to maintain. The city of Cincinnati alone is home to 52 neighborhoods, and each community is unique. “We really need to be contextual in our projects,” says Wisniewski. “What works in one market might not work in another.” For example, downtown residents typically have access to a variety of amenities and so developers don’t face strong demand from prospective buyers to build a pool or gym in an apartment building.

“People want to spend less time mowing the grass and more time engaged in recreational activities with friends and family.”

The interest in smaller lots has continued to increase. “It all comes down to time,” says Wisniewski. “People want to spend less time mowing the grass and more time engaged in recreational activities with friends and family.”

The future of real estate dangles by what he refers to as the “Not in My Back Yard” attitude many people have. “Many good projects are denied because a handful of very vocal residents do not want change, and those voices limit opportunities for people to find good homes in good communities,” says Wisniewski.

A model home at Fischer Homes’ Ballyshannon community in Union, Kentucky.

PROST! ON THE RIVER

You’ll be able to raise a special Rookwooddesigned stein at this fall’s Oktoberfest.

—CARRIE BLACKMORE

Looking to create more of a European feel this year, Oktoberfest Zinzinnati is moving to tree-lined Sawyer Point and Yeatman’s Cove, and organizers are commemorating the move with a first-of-its-kind beer stein produced by Cincinnati’s own Rookwood Pottery.

Rookwood President and CEO Micah Carroll says it “just made sense” for the company with 144 years of history in Cincinnati to produce Oktoberfest’s commemorative stein. “Rookwood has been doing steins since the very beginning,” he says, “and we are all so pumped to make this piece. There will be a lot of things unique to Cincinnati in the design. It’s very intentional and fun.”

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati is presented by Samuel Adams and produced by the Cincinnati Regional Chamber. The limited run of 1,000 Rookwood steins will be sold for $50 at festival souvenir booths September 19-22.

Rookwood sculptor and master moldmaker Gary Simon designed the stein and says his favorite part is probably the dachshund in lederhosen. He joined Rookwood in 2005 and has designed a number of high-profile commemorative pieces, including Fiona the hippo ornaments, Graeter’s ice cream bowls, and decorative tiles featuring the Roebling Suspension Bridge.

Chamber officials wanted the Oktoberfest stein to include the 2024 festival logo, says Simon, so he designed it to look like wood on one side while having creative freedom with the other side. The dachshund pays homage to the festival’s Running of the Wieners race, and he added a hand-carved hop to sit atop the stein handle. “My family is of German descent, and my wife’s father was a German immigrant,” he says, adding it was fun to connect with his own heritage through the project.

Simon constructed the original mold in Munchen style: tapered in at the top and able to hold a liter of liquid. The ceramic holds heat and cold very well, he says. The finishing glaze will be one of Rookwood’s “self-antiquing” glazes created in the company’s color lab. It will be translucent but become darker in deeper areas of the piece as more layers of glaze are applied, a distinctive look Rookwood has become known for.

Each piece goes through 13 sets of hands before it’s completed, Carroll says, starting with the designer. Each piece passes to staff members who create the molds, pour and cast each stein, clean up individual seams and imperfections, fire the pieces, glaze them, and fire each again—all done in Rookwood’s Over-the-Rhine facility. The team has been busy with other custom pieces of late, Carroll says, including new trophies for the upcoming Cincinnati Open tennis tournament.

“When clients come to our door, we know they are trying to elevate an idea, because Rookwood is an investment,” Carroll says, “A monetary investment, an investment in time. Each piece will get Rookwood’s historic makers mark on the bottom and a mold number, just as we’ve been doing for over 144 years.”

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THEY MAKE BLACK HISTORY EVERY DAY

This year’s eight honorees make a remarkable difference in “our little big city.”

—ELIZABETH MILLER WOOD

ince 2019, the Cincinnati Regional Chamber has recognized and celebrated a class of exceptional Black leaders who are making a difference in their fields and their communities. These leaders are business influencers, artists, entrepreneurs, mentors, and volunteers who lead with passion and vision to create a better tomorrow for the Cincinnati region. This year’s Making Black History honorees were celebrated at the Chamber’s Annual Dinner on February 29.

TRACEY ARTIS

CEO OF I HEAR MUSIC NOW INC.

A prominent force in the gospel music industry, Artis is best known for her marketing, brand consulting, and radio promotion expertise that has helped launch more than 50 Billboard No. 1 singles. Her promotions and marketing firm, I Hear Music Inc., has produced the “I Hear Music in the Air Conference” annually in Cincinnati for 23 years. “The legacy that I hope to leave behind is one of servanthood. ... Those that serve, those are the greatest among us.”

KEITH BORDERS

CHIEF CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

OFFICER AND VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AT UNION & GUARDIAN SAVINGS BANK

A multilayered career in corporate litigation management, employment law, and DEI strategies has positioned Borders to succeed in his current facets of economic and community development that promote homeownership lending opportunities. “I imagine and hope for the future of Cincinnati that it continues to be a center of empowerment and opportunity not only for a few, but for everyone.”

“Education 100% changed the opportunities that I’ve had in my life. … If you give people opportunities, for the most part they will take advantage of them.”

PATRICE BORDERS

CEO AND FOUNDER OF AMPLIFYEI

Borders is a workplace consultant who helps organizations build mindful, emotionally intelligent leadership. Her neuroscience-based methodology equips leaders to navigate stress, uncertainty, and conflict while protecting their personal and professional well-being. “The best advice I received was to be present: to be here, now, and in this moment.”

VERNON JACKSON

CEO AND FOUNDER OF NOBLE BARBER & BEAUTY; CREATOR OF THE GIFTED EVENT

In his Corryville salon, Jackson hosts The Gifted Event, a service that delivers haircut experiences to children with special needs through patience, empathy, accommodation, and understanding. His work has garnered more than 30 million social media views and earned Jackson a guest appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show. “When you live some place your whole life, you give it so much of yourself. … It’s a relationship.”

DANIELLE LEWIS JONES

HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR KROGER HEALTH

A lifelong Cincinnatian, Lewis Jones held prominent public relations positions for Fifth Third Bank and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital prior to her current role at Kroger Health. She is a mentor for young women and a board member for Ladies of Leadership and serves on LifeCenter’s Donor Family Council. “I love our little big city. The degrees of separation are small, which means the connections are tight.”

ALANDES POWELL

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER OF BLACK ART SPEAKS

In 2020, Powell co-founded Black Art Speaks, a nonprofit dedicated to elevating artists and promoting cultural expression. She participates in multiple community boards and initiatives, including the Cincinnati Black Lives Matter Mural, that champion social justice, the arts, and community development. “At the end of my days, what I want is to not have left anything on the table undone.”

ROBERT SANDERS

PRINCIPAL AND FOUNDER OF SANDERS DEVELOPMENT GROUP

A native of Overthe-Rhine, Sanders graduated from Taft High School and Ohio State University before founding Sanders Development Group in 2019. The group recently completely a $4 million renovation of Triversity Construction’s headquarters in Walnut Hills. “Education 100% changed the opportunities that I’ve had in my life. … I just want people to have opportunity, because if you give people opportunities, for the most part they will take advantage of them.”

ROLANDA J. WILKERSON

SENIOR DIRECTOR AND FELLOW OF BEAUTY CARE AT PROCTER & GAMBLE

With a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Louisiana State University, Wilkerson’s 18year career with P&G has helped pioneer research to advance the inclusivity of multicultural hair, skin, and personal care product designs. She is a passionate advocate for women in STEM careers. “When there’s a level of satisfaction in the work that you do every single day, that’s success.”

McGohan Brabender on the Impact of GLP-1s:

What it means for employers looking for long-term wellness management.

GE Is an Engine

for Growth

THE RECHRISTENED COMPANY, GE AEROSPACE, DEBUTED IN APRIL AND IS LOOKING TO SUPERCHARGE HIRING, TALENT DEVELOPMENT, AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT ACROSS THE REGION.

BY JOHN STOWELL

THE MOOD WAS raucous April 2 as employees stood shoulder-to-shoulder in blue T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “We Are Go.” Larry Culp was just back from the Lower Manhattan, where he and his fellow CEOs—his General Electric “cousins”—had rung the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Over five years and with a generous helping of tough love, the low-

“WE LOOK AT THE NEW AEROSPACE NAME AS ASPIRATIONAL,” SAYS MIKE KAUFFMAN, GE’S VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN.

under Culp it’s split into three parts. Its most lucrative and innovative slice, the aviation business, was now officially known as GE Aerospace and was keeping its headquarters in suburban Cincinnati.

“It’s a great day for Evendale and, really, the entire region,” said Richard Finan, long-time mayor of probably the smallest U.S. town with a Fortune 500 company (population 2,600). While the headquarters complex sits off I-75 on the northern edge of Hamilton County, GE Aerospace facilities are staffed with highly skilled employees in West Chester, Springdale, Dayton, Peebles, and Northern Kentucky.

And, while the company’s supply chain is global, local business such as Fairfield’s Element Materials, Reading’s General Tool Company, Sycamore Township’s Cincinnati Thermal Spray, CTL Aerospace in West Chester, and Sharonville’s StandardAero are anticipating a bright future with the high-flying Culp and crew.

needs to go higher, faster, hotter, and more efficiently, so that opens the aperture of where we work. We certainly believe that our technologies play beyond just commercial transportation and aviation.”

A UNIQUE SUPPLY CHAIN

THE AVIATION INDUStry’s supply chain is smaller and more specialized than most sectors, and the capital costs required to build manufacturing centers to serve a large corporation like GE Aerospace can be daunting. “So aviation suppliers tend to locate around hot centers, which for us are places like Wichita, Kansas; Seattle; Connecticut; Texas; and here in Cincinnati,” Kauffman says. “The locally based suppliers you mention make a major component or module subassembly for us, and many have offices or manufacturing facilities all over the globe.”

key executive had saved a crippled company by breaking it up. At this event in Evendale, Culp was smiling, backslapping, and clearly ready to launch the next chapter in the life of a company more than 130 years old and yet just a few hours young.

Those GE “cousins” on the stock exchange podium had been brothers—members of the same company that could trace its roots back to Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb. GE was once one of America’s foremost conglomerates with a history that had touched almost every industry from refrigerators, credit cards and gas turbines to radio, television, and medical instruments, but

Element Materials has signed a long-term lease for 21,525 square feet of new space in Blue Ash and is in the process of hiring 65 more employees. General Tool purchased more than six acres of land on Evendale’s AeroHub commercial campus and is building a 56,000-square-foot, $8.5-million advanced manufacturing facility that will house at least 47 professional machinists, fabricators, and engine assemblers.

Perhaps the changes to come are embedded in the new Aerospace name. “We look at that name as aspirational,” says Mike Kauffman, GE’s vice president of supply chain. “We recognize that powered flight

Kauffman is cautious about predicting that GE Aerospace will attract more suppliers to the Cincinnati region, noting it’s often less expensive to transport their products than it is to build new infrastructure.

“Rates of production are so important to the auto industry,” he notes, saying suppliers in that business tend to be located just a few miles from the assembly line. Where one Detroit factory might roll off 1,500 cars a day, GE produced about 2,600 engines in 2023. And yet, when adding in the company’s partnership with French manufacturer Safran, that makes it the world’s largest engine producer.

“What I think you’ll see going forward is, as we grow, it’ll become more desirable for our suppliers to build or expand here, as we’ve al -

ready seen,” says Kauffman. “But the overall benefit to the area is being felt more broadly right now with what we call indirect materials”—businesses such as hotels, restaurants, conference centers, and office suppliers like Cintas, which are injecting real-time fuel into the regional economy.

It’s been more than 120 years since the Wright Brothers soared above the sands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and it took just 66 years to put Neil Armstrong’s first footprints on the moon. The aerospace industry continues to evolve, says Kauffman, with a focus on efficiency, advanced materials, and

clean-burning fuels.

The engine of the future, he says, may well run on hydrogen—a clean-burning element that’s part of a wide variety of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that GE and other manufacturers are studying and testing.

SAFs are environmentally friendly, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent compared to petroleum-based jet fuel. Aviation accounts for roughly 8 percent of U.S. emissions. With commercial airlines, SAFs show promise in improved engine efficiency and reduced cost. For the military, SAFs could allow a fighter to stay in the air longer, maneuver faster, and increase

its combat potential. And, in general, SAFs can reduce the country’s dependency on foreign sources of fuel.

“We’re investing and developing technologies on multiple fronts, looking for the sweet spot where we can focus on the next generation of aircraft engines,” Kauffman says. He talks enthusiastically about a suite of technologies centered around hydrogen, different propulsive drive systems, hybrid electric, and unducted and un-shrouded fans—all part of a program GE calls “RISE,” or Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines.

“Our whole fuel infrastructure has been centered around petroleum

LEADING THE WAY

GE Aerospace is the world’s largest jet engine producer, manufacturing more than 2,500 engines per year.

to gasoline, but hydrogen carries its own challenges,” he says. Since it takes a lot more hydrogen to fuel a jet, the key challenge is scale. How do you transport hydrogen fuel and safely store it at the airport? How do you fuel the plane and “keep it in the tank” safely? And how do you make it cost competitive?

Hydrogen isn’t the only SAF the company is studying. Could a corn farmer in Iowa someday be growing the feedstock that fuels GE Aerospace’s next-generation engines? How about fuels made from vege -

“WE HAVE ROUGHLY 1,000 POSITIONS OPEN RIGHT NOW,” SAYS MIKE BENSON, GE’S CHIEF TALENT OFFICER. “WE’RE HIRING TALENT THAT WILL LEAD THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT.”

HIRING IS INSPIRING

GE’S SUPPLY CHAIN isn’t comprised of just widgets and multi-syllabic chemical materials. Perhaps its most important link is brain power. And that’s an ongoing challenge for Kauffman and his GE Aerospace colleagues. “It’s one of the key constraints in our industry,” he says, citing a range of critical professions where demand is exceeding supply. “This isn’t the heat-and-beat, grindit-out days of the old dirty factory floor. You’re dealing with high tech, expensive machinery, and processes that require deep knowledge, skill, and innovation. Employees with these skill sets aren’t easy to find.”

As air travel returns with a post-COVID vengeance and GE Aerospace is determined to remain a market leader in the commercial aviation engine space, the “Help Wanted” sign is flashing green in Evendale. A lot of the new hires are expected to be homegrown.

of our local universities,” he says, noting that 35-40 percent of hires over the last several years are graduates of the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, University of Dayton, and Northern Kentucky University. “A number of these employees have started here, gone elsewhere in our system, and come back—and maybe have done that more than once.”

The company, Benson notes, also contributes to the Cincinnati region’s diversity by bringing in employees from all over the world to work and live here—some temporarily, some permanently. “If you think about the people we hire and will hire, they’re experts in engineering, ceramic matrix composites, digital technology, and manufacturing processes,” he says. “These are complex and demanding jobs that will become even more so as technologies advance and competition increases.”

table oils and cooking fats? Maybe municipal and landfill waste? Pond scum? GE, says Kauffman, has always been “engine agnostic” when it comes to developing new metal alloys, ceramics, and turbine blades. So it is with new sustainable fuels and, eventually, the engine designs that will support them.

“The supply chain we have today will be completely different in the future,” he predicts. “We’re just in the demonstration phase of these fuels now, but once we land on the right formula we’ll begin to look for the right partners and suppliers to make it happen.”

“We have roughly 1,000 positions open right now,” says Mike Benson, the company’s chief talent officer. “They’re highly skilled, highly technical jobs. We’re hiring talent that will not just support and improve our current aircraft engine programs but will be on the forefront of developing new technologies to shape the future of flight.”

Some of the new hires will bring on-the-job experience and even leadership roles from other firms, but Benson also has his eye out for recent college graduates who contribute an elan to an organization that wants to be known as an innovator. “We have strong relationships with each

Complex and demanding jobs that are well-paying—that brings a smile to Mayor Finan’s face. “Evendale lives on payroll taxes, as most cities do,” he says, “and this year, at the end of the first quarter, we had already collected $3 million. That’s enough for us to live on for a whole year if we didn’t take in another dime.”

GE, Finan says, encourages its employees—whether they live in Evendale or not—to pay the city’s 1.2 percent payroll rate. Most do, and a few non-residents apply for refunds. Evendale’s finances are so healthy that it’s funding a new $6 million service building in cash.

DEVELOPING STEM TALENT

WHILE BENSON works to address GE’s immediate staffing

needs in order to keep the company on a growth spurt, he notes that the future presents its own challenges. A 2022 report from the National Science Board found that STEM education quality (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) has been declining in U.S. high schools since the 1980s. STEM programs in nations such as China, South Korea, Japan, and even Russia are ranked higher.

“What we see is that the performance of U.S. children has not kept pace with the performance of students from other countries in science and mathematics for a decade or more,” says Julia Phillips of the

National Science Board. “We have pretty much stayed steady, and other countries have improved dramatically. When you look at the closest economic competitors to the U.S., our scores are in last place in mathematics and in the middle of the pack in science. Math scores have not improved for more than a decade.”

Three years ago, GE sought to respond to this growing challenge with the “Next Engineers” program, which it runs jointly with UC. The goal, says Benson, is to spark interest in STEM-related careers among middle and high school students by connecting them with working GE engineers.

“In middle school, we’re just trying to open eyes to the possibilities and build a relationship,” he says. “In ninth and 10th grade, we’ve had 500 students involved in a summer weeklong program, while junior- and senior-year students get more handson experience and a lot of quality hours working with our team.”

The hope is that a good number of Next Engineers students matriculate into a college scholarship, an internship, and eventually a full-time job designing new engines, testing new material composites, or experimenting with new aviation fuels. “It may not uniquely benefit GE,” says Global Director of Public Affairs

UP, UP, AWAY As air travel returns postCOVID, GE Aerospace is looking to hire. A lot of the entry-level jobs are expected to be filled by hometown college grads.

TAKEAWAYS

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER

GE Aerospace officially launched as a Fortune 500 company in April, maintaining its headquarters in Evendale as well as facilities in West Chester, Springdale, Dayton, Peebles, and Northern Kentucky. A number of regional vendors are expanding their manufacturing plants in response.

HELP WANTED

The company has roughly 1,000 highly skilled, highly technical positions open now and is actively recruiting around the U.S. and the world. GE also works with local high schools and universities to develop the next generation of talent; 35-40 percent of recent hires are UC, Xavier, Dayton, and NKU graduates.

DEVELOPING

TALENT

The renamed GE Aerospace Foundation committed $1 million to the United Way of Greater Cincinnati for a manufacturing workforce development program to identify, train, educate, and hire new talent from across the region. United Way hopes to announce their first recipients by mid-summer.

Meghan Thurlow. “The student may end up working for someone else, but Next Engineers is an important part of our commitment to both the community and to the industry. Developing a pipeline starts with showing the students a powerful vision of an engineering career and what it would be like to be a part of this workforce. We’re putting the E back in STEM education.”

The program’s first Cincinnati-area cohort of 45 high school students graduated in May. Many of these GE Engineering Academy students are heading to UC in the fall, scholarships in hand and an already-rigorous academic experience under their belt. Since the program started, more than 18,000 students in Cincinnati, South Carolina, the United Kingdom, and South Africa have participated in the Next Engineers curriculum. GE is expanding the program to Warsaw, Poland, and three other cities through 2028.

In an attempt to ensure the company attracts a diverse and inclusive future workforce, the company created the LIFT program, which stands for Leaders Innovating Flight for Tomorrow. Nearly 100 college students from minority communities across the U.S. participated in the first LIFT summit last summer, and the threeday program is being expanded to 130 participants in July.

Students selected for the program are typically rising college juniors and seniors who, in addition to getting an inside track on internships, spend time networking with key executives and peers, tour the various GE manufacturing and research facilities, and get a close-up look at career oppor-

tunities in the aviation industry. They may also take in a Reds game, sample a three-way, and take in the charms of what one day could be their hometown.

As the aviation industry continues to grow and innovate, GE Aerospace—even before it became an official stand-alone company— announced its intent to invest more than $650 million in infrastructure improvements. In Ohio, the company will spend about $107 million to

“WE’LL WORK WITH OUR PARTNERS TO IDENTIFY, TRAIN, EDUCATE, AND FIND JOBS THAT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE,” SAYS UNITED WAY’S MOIRA WEIR.

upgrade a variety of machinery, specialized tools, hoists, and test cells that will allow the company to accelerate manufacturing and test regional aircraft engines, military helicopters, and fighter jets. Those investments will be applied to facilities in West Chester, Evendale, and Peebles.

“We’ve noticed a big uptake in building permits from them to upgrade what they have and add to it,” says Finan, noting the company’s largest Evendale building was built before World War II. “It’s the largest building in the U.S. under a single span, but it obviously needs updating. GE has a lot of land for expansion, so we’re looking forward to the big things they have planned.”

Referencing GE’s billion-dol-

lar-plus advanced engine contracts with the Air Force and nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Finan predicts the Evendale headquarters could “end up being about 40 percent manufacturing and 60 percent research and development.”

Despite Evendale’s love affair with GE, he says, love doesn’t have to mean dependency. The village has cobbled together land over the last several years and continues to add to its AeroHub advanced manufacturing campus, which Evendale is populating with a diverse mix of companies, including GE suppliers such as General Tool.

COMMUNITY BOOSTS

CULP, IN REDESIGNING the company’s culture, has leaned heavily on promoting safety and demonstrating leadership humility. The CEO is a zenlike executive who brought “lean management” to the birthplace of Six Sigma, with a strong focus on customer satisfaction, community involvement, and safety. Those qualities seem to form the backbone and focus of the company’s philanthropic arm, renamed the GE Aerospace Foundation.

GE Aerospace wasn’t in business even a month before leaders announced a major commitment through the company foundation: a $1-million workforce development contribution over the next three years to the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, with another $1 million tranche earmarked later for the region’s benefit.

“We’ve been working in a co-creation mode with GE to help create a manufacturing workforce that can

fill the pipeline of employees that GE and other manufacturers here will need for the future,” says Moira Weir, United Way’s local president and chief executive officer. “With these funds, we’ll work with our partners to identify, train, educate, and find jobs that will make a difference.”

Funding will go from United Way to nonprofits and educational/ training centers that will choose individuals for grants ranging between $25,000 and $50,000. United Way hopes to announce the selected recipients by mid-summer. “These grants really showcase how private funding and philanthropy can drive change,” says Weir.

The foundation also renewed GE’s long-standing partnership with Airlink, a nonprofit that organizes quick responses to disasters all over the world. In 2023, Airlink directly assisted more than 12 million people impacted by disasters such as the war in Ukraine, massive floods in Brazil, the Turkey-Syria earthquakes, famine in Africa, a cholera outbreak in Haiti, and wildfires here in the U.S.

“When disaster hits, speed is what counts in responding,” says Thurlow. “Airlink can get food, medicine, water, and relief workers to where they’re needed quickly. Our support exemplifies our purpose as a company, which is to lift communities up, especially when they’re in need.”

The “lift” that seems to be a mantra at GE applies to its employees as well. Seventy years ago, GE pioneered the “matching gifts program” with employees: You give to the charity of your choice, and we’ll match it. Since then, the GE Foundation has contributed more than $1.5 billion to its employees’ favorite nonprofits. Today, matching gifts are standard at many Fortune 500 companies.

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT

GE Aerospace’s Global Director of Public Affairs Meghan Thurlow and Vice President of Supply Chain Mike Kauffman

The newest employee incentive was announced as GE Aerospace became a stand-alone in April, but it didn’t get much press until Culp mentioned it six weeks later in a speech at the Washington Economic Club. All 52,000 GE employees will become equity investors in the new company through the issuance of GE shares.

Culp explained the stock award as a way to bring the team together and give each employee a stake in the company’s future. It has generally received positive reviews from analysts and, considering how GE’s stock has thrived since the split, employees likely are happy as well.

As for investors? The business is now solidly focused, and the future looks exciting. The economic scars from the lean years under the old regime—and not “lean” like Culp means it—appear to be healing.

GE Aerospace’s first quarter results showed revenue up 15 percent ($8.1 billion) and operating profit up 24 percent ($1.5 billion). Orders increased 34 percent to $11 billion. The stock price, at the end of the new company’s first two months of operation, was up more than 18 percent.

Like Mayor Finan, the Street seems to be bullish. UBS, in late May, raised the company’s target price from $191 to $201, noting a marked increase in air travel and subsequent need by the airlines for more planes, the company’s dominant position in the aviation space, and its engine presence on both Airbus and Boeing products.

“My grandfather started out entry level at GE and was that typical American dream story, working here his whole career,” says Thurlow. “He’s still alive, and he shares his opinion on how the company is doing.” She tells him the truth: The company is doing just fine.

The City’s Future Has Arrived

THE CINCINNATI FUTURES COMMISSION OFFERS BIG IDEAS. NOW ELECTED OFFICIALS, BUSINESSES, AND RESIDENTS WILL HAVE THEIR SAY.

BY DAVID HOLTHAUS

On November 15, 2022, in his first State of the City speech, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval cited a list of achievements—including progress in affordable housing, gun safety measures, and pedestrian safety—and then turned to the challenges ahead. The city’s budget deficit is expected to get worse with time, as expenses are growing faster than revenues. It’s “an existential problem,” the mayor said.

Pureval referred to a similar looming issue in the 1980s, the city’s deteriorating infrastructure, and the response: appointment of a blue-ribbon commission led by Procter & Gamble’s then-CEO, John Smale. He then announced the formation of a new task force led by P&G’s current chief executive, Jon Moeller. The commission would be charged with three tasks: “A deep careful review” of the city’s budget, an analysis of the city’s economic development strategy, and recommendations for future funding.

His request was in the tradition of Cincinnati civic and business leaders being asked to provide counsel to elected leaders. In 1984, the Phillips Commission created a comprehensive report on the city’s op-

erations that was followed up by the Infrastructure Commission, chaired by Smale. In 2001, in the wake of civil unrest in Over-the-Rhine and downtown, the Cincinnati Action Now (CAN) Commission was created to identify police, community, and economic reforms. That ultimately led to the creation of 3CDC and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in the urban core, as well as many other initiatives.

Sixteen months after Pureval’s announcement, his task force, which named itself the Cincinnati Futures Commission, released a 77-page deep dive into the city budget and recommendations to spur growth in population and city revenue. In an introductory note, Moeller calls it “a blueprint that can solve many of the city’s major challenges and usher in a decade of growth and prosperity in Cincinnati.”

That blueprint now awaits action by the mayor, city council, city departments, and the public at large.

Leading the study were Moeller, a 36-year P&G veteran and head of the $80 billion global company; Tim Spence, CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp, the $12 billion Cincinnati-based financial institution; Katie Blackburn, executive vice president of the Cincinnati Bengals; and Phillip Holloman, retired president and chief operating officer of Cintas Corp., a $9 billion enterprise, and cofounder of the Holloman Center for Social Justice. They were assisted by 30 commission members—leaders from the business, legal, not-for-profit, and labor sectors along with staff of the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, the Cincinnati Business Committee and the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, P&G employees, consulting firm EY, and Cohear, which conducted focus groups.

Commission members or staff met

with more than 800 people, more than 70 organizations, 16 city departments, each City Councilmember, the mayor, the city manager and staff, and previously elected city leaders.

THE CINCINNATI FU-

tures Commission’s overarching goal was to find ways to generate growth in population, jobs, and revenue in the city of Cincinnati over the next decade. The 2020 census found that Cincinnati’s population grew modestly, by 4 percent, in the previous 10 years, reversing decades of population loss.

Yet, despite this good news and other positive signs—the revitalization of neighborhood business districts, job growth, and strong arts and culture and dining scenes—clouds loom on the horizon. The COVID-era federal aid that propped up city budgets is ending. The huge shift to remote work means a significant loss of earnings tax revenue for the city, as about 65,000 people went to work downtown every day pre-pandemic.

Complicating these immediate threats is a culture of complacency, both at City Hall and in the populace in general. “The city has not traditionally been guided by growth goals,” the report states. “The city lacks a bold vision for economic growth,” it says in another section.

Adding to this status quo attitude is a certain amount of skepticism among city residents, who have become accustomed to annual urgent reports about budget deficits only to see them solved, usually with 11th-hour workarounds or one-time infusions of money. Just 14 percent of respondents to a commis-

sion survey believed the city’s financial condition is “fair or poor.”

“The Futures Commission immediately recognized this as a challenge, as it is recommending significant changes that may come as a surprise to residents who are not closely following the longer-term structural imbalances in the City’s budget,” the report says. “However, the data showing a longterm unsustainable financial model is undeniable.”

The commission projects budget deficits beginning in fiscal 2026 and

COMMISSION MEMBERS OR STAFF MET WITH MORE THAN 800 PEOPLE, MORE THAN 70 ORGANIZATIONS, 16 CITY DEPARTMENTS, EACH CITY COUNCILMEMBER, THE MAYOR, THE CITY MANAGER AND STAFF, AND PREVIOUSLY ELECTED CITY LEADERS.

forecasts deficits growing each year through fiscal 2033, as remote work and its impact on earnings tax revenue, rising employee costs, and inflation contribute to a difficult budget environment. Cincinnatians have a higher tax burden than most of the 10 peer cities the commission examined. Much of that is due to taxes not levied by the city or Cincinnati Public Schools but by Hamilton County, particularly the property tax.

CINCINNATI’S ECONOMIC DIVERSITY

Looming over the long-term budgetary landscape is an obligation to fund the city employee pensions. Cincinnati is the only city in Ohio that has its own municipal employee pension fund, the report notes. Keeping its obligation to fully fund the pension system by 2045 will mean, on average, annual contributions of $60 million a year for the next 20 years.

Research also found that Cincinnati has the highest level of income inequality among the cities it’s benchmarked against. Cincinnati’s median household income is 10th out of the 11 cities (from St. Louis to Pittsburgh to Raleigh, North Carolina), and Cincinnati experienced the slowest growth in this group over the five years from 2016 to 2021. “Relative to peer cities, Cincinnati’s lack of overall prosperity is sobering,” the report says.

On the plus side, the city’s diversified economy is a strength, as no major industry category accounts for more than 17 percent of employment. And Cincinnati’s infrastructure maintenance needs received a huge amount of support with the sale of the city-owned railway and the resulting $1.6 billion trust fund devoted to infrastructure. Cincinnatians generally have a good opinion of their city’s public services, as a commission survey found that 75 percent rated basic services as “good or excellent.”

This was the landscape as the Futures

Commission began its work. “Many cities are facing the real possibility of cutting back on services and decreasing investments into their communities,” the report says. “The Cincinnati Futures Commission was convened to confront these challenges and orient the city toward growth.”

The in-depth recommendations can be boiled down to one word: growth. The commission lays out a series of big goals it says would usher in a decade of growth in population, jobs, and income. If the goals are attained over the next 10 years, Cincinnati could add 26,000 new residents, 44,000 new jobs, a $21,500 increase in per capita income, and a $21,000 increase in earnings per job.

Achieving these goals will require change at City Hall, the commission says. “The city needs to implement a strategy, structure, and culture at City Hall that works toward these goals on a day-to-day basis. It is crucial that elected city leadership and the administration make it clear to city staff that these goals are a north star to strive for when approaching work.”

ONE OF THE COMMISSION’S

big recommendations is to establish an Office of Strategic Growth at City Hall, staffed by three or four people whose first order of business would be to conduct a review of the process involved in

getting development done in the city “to understand all the structural and cultural roadblocks to development that currently exist, and plans to reform the process to orient it toward growth.” Mainly, the city’s response time to development proposals needs to be improved, and its process for permitting and approvals should be simplified.

Holding back new employers and job growth is a lack of development-ready sites, the report says, or “a dearth of sites that are ready to locate new projects.” To remedy that, the commission recommends creating a $100-million fund to identify and acquire job-ready development sites. The city could work with The Port, which is already doing this work, and an investment of $190 million to acquire and improve 500 acres of land is estimated to help create 9,200 total local jobs. “The long-term viability of the city is tied to its ability to grow and attract jobs and talent while increasing employment opportunities and incomes for city residents,” the report says.

Attracting 25,000 new residents over the next decade will require an increase in housing as well as improvements in urban neighborhoods. But over the previous decade, fewer than half of all neighborhoods have experienced a net increase in new housing units—even those with the hottest real estate markets, the commission found. “That

trend has to be reversed for the city to achieve these growth goals,” the report says.

The biggest obstacle to housing growth is the lack of funding needed to gain control of key plots of real estate or fill gaps in development projects that exist. The commission recommends creating a $50-million neighborhood growth fund to accelerate investments in developing areas of the city. The fund could be used not only to acquire land for market-rate housing but also to repopulate neighborhood business districts and create mixed-use developments and other amenities that drive population growth.

The city has used financing tools to do this kind of work in some neighborhoods such as Madisonville, Northside, and College Hill, and the most notable example is 3CDC’s efforts in Over-the-Rhine. “But the city has never had a consistent and dedi-

cated revenue stream of this size for this kind of Neighborhood Growth Fund,” the report says.

To address the shortage of affordable housing, the city is already investing $5 million a year in the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund maintained by the not-for-profit Cincinnati Development Fund. The commission recommended increasing that amount to $15 million a year, for a net additional spend of $100 million over 10 years. That funding would enable Cincinnati Development Fund to take full advantage of state and federal housing tax credits and other financing for affordable housing. “These funds—when leveraged to their maximum capacity—could create 500-600 affordable housing units per year,” the report says.

In comparing Cincinnati with 10 peer cities, the commission finds that Cincinnati has the biggest disparities in income between white and non-

white residents. Improving the city’s economic life will mean growing incomes for nonwhite residents, as nearly half of the city’s population is nonwhite. To that end, the commission recommends scaling up an existing program called the Lincoln & Gilbert Initiative, a partnership among the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio, the Minority Business Accelerator, the African American Chamber and other organizations to double the number of Black employer firms in city to over 1,000 by supporting entrepreneurship and providing technical assistance and back-office support. The commission suggests allocating $25 million to ramp up the initiative’s capacity.

All told, the commission recommends $290 million in new spending over 10 years, including the sites for jobs fund, the neighborhood fund, the affordable housing fund, and the Lincoln & Gilbert investment. That

BLUE SKY

Cost-saving recommendations include leasing the cityowned Lunken Airport to CVG.

TAKEAWAYS

CREATING A FUTURE CITY

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval asked Procter & Gamble

CEO Jon Moeller to lead a commission of business leaders to study the city’s budget, analyze its economic development strategy, and recommend future funding. Moeller calls the resulting report “a blueprint that can solve many of the city’s major challenges and usher in a decade of growth and prosperity in Cincinnati.”

SPURRING GROWTH

The commission forecasts $438 million in city budget deficits that must be covered over the next 10 years and suggests new spending to spur development and growth, including launching an Office of Strategic Growth at City Hall.

EARNINGS TAX BUMP

One way to help offset these new expenses, the commission says, is to raise the city earnings tax from its current 1.8 percent to 1.95 percent. Cincinnati’s payroll tax would still be less than those in Dayton (2.25), Cleveland (2.5), Columbus (2.5), and Toledo (2.5).

amount also includes $10 million for the Office of Strategic Growth and $5 million to beef up Homebase, a nonprofit organization that works to increase the capacity of neighborhood community development corporations.

In addition to that new spending, the commission forecasts $438 million in budget deficits that must be covered over the next 10 years—adding up to a total of $728 million in expenses above and beyond the city’s current operating budget.

HOW TO PAY FOR ALL

that $728 million in new expenses? Almost half ($357 million) would be funded by an increase in the city earnings tax. Now at 1.8 percent, the commission recommends an increase to 1.95 percent, with some caveats.

Another $164 million would come from a fee for trash collection, which is currently paid for from the city’s general operating fund. The recommended monthly fee would be about $15.30 for each Cincinnati household and $7.60 for lower-income households.The rest (about $177 million) would come from holding down the growth of police and fire budgets, selling some city assets, redeploying some of the city infrastructure tax, expansion of parking enforcement, and other fees.

The earnings tax hasn’t been increased in more than 50 years. An additional 0.1 percent would pay for most of the growth initiatives, such as the sites for jobs fund. Another 0.05% would go toward police and fire budgets, ensuring stable funding there. That would bring the total city tax on income to 1.95 percent, still below the earnings taxes in Dayton (2.25), Cleveland (2.5), Columbus (2.5), and Toledo (2.5).

The report calls this increase “a timebound, limited proposal” that

could be achieved with a vote by citizens and should be used only for the purposes outlined by the commission. A time-limited tax increase would allow voters an opportunity in the future to review the need for the revenue and the investments it funds and possibly scale it back.

The commission says its support for an additional tax to support police and fire budget is contingent on those two departments conducting in-depth stud-

“GIVEN THE CRITICAL CHALLENGES WE FACE, ENSURING OUR LONG-TERM VIBRANCY REQUIRES MAKING COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT DECISIONS IN THE SHORT TERM,” SAYS CINCINNATI MAYOR AFTAB PUREVAL.

ies on their operations, spending, and staffing. Neither has had such a study in more than 15 years, the report says, noting that at least $17.6 million could be saved over 10 years through changes to make operations and staffing more efficient.

“The city should see this report as holistic and not pick and choose pieces of the report to implement or disregard,” the report says. “Support for the timebound police and fire levy is contingent on the city doing the work to implement the overall operational efficiencies related to its budget.”

The recommendations noted that

commission members have different perspectives. Some believe a tax increase at this time is “neither prudent nor necessary.” Others believe that the proposed increase isn’t big enough to meet the city’s needs over the next decade.

The commission also recommends redeploying a portion of the city earnings tax dedicated to infrastructure. The sale of the Cincinnati Southern Railway to establish an infrastructure trust fund will eventually make the infrastructure tax unnecessary. The commission sees a $65 million gain in revenue for the general fund over the next decade from redeployment.

All told, the commission identifies $728.1 million in new revenue or savings that could be achieved over the next decade, enough to pay for investments to generate and accelerate growth and cover anticipated budget deficits. “In short, if the city and its elected and appointed leaders adopt the recommendations contained in this plan, the result will be transformational for Cincinnati and its citizens,” the report concludes.

In late June, just before City Council went on summer break, City Manager Sheryl Long delivered a verbal report on the feasibility of some of the recommendations and what has already been done or is in progress. The ticket-tax expansion, for example, has already been approved, and efforts are under way to generate more revenue from parking. But additional recommendations—leasing Lunken Airport, regionalizing the water works system, and sharing services among the parks and recreation departments, and others—are more complex, involve other governmental agencies, and will need further analysis, Long told Council. Her administration will continue to work with the business community on an implementation plan.

Pureval released a statement immediately following the report’s release, saying,“Given the critical challenges we face—like public safety, budgetary challenges, economic growth, housing, and the environment—ensuring our long-term vibrancy requires making complex and difficult decisions in the short term. While the report makes clear that this is a holistic set of recommendations, many of the individual items will require vetting, public engagement, and an eye toward our vision of equitable growth.” That, he said, “will take time.”

CINCINNATI FUTURES

COMMISSION: SOURCES OF REVENUE OR COST SAVINGS

• Increase the city’s earnings tax from 1.8 percent to 1.95 percent, generating $357 million over the next 10 years.

• Step up parking enforcement and add more parking meters to gain $10 million over 10 years.

• Extend the city tax on sporting event and concert tickets to resold tickets. City Council passed such an ordinance in January. The commission says that will generate $11.7 million over 10 years.

• Share more duties and services between the Cincinnati Parks department and the Cincinnati Recreation Commission to save $25 million over 10 years.

• Expand an asset management agreement between Cincinnati Parks and Great Parks of Hamilton County for Mt. Airy Forest and French Park, saving $9.5 million.

• Study divesting the Greater Cincinnati Water Works to an independent, public regional water authority.

• Transfer the city’s pension system to the state of Ohio’s public employee pension system.

• Consider selling or leasing the six cityowned golf courses.

• Explore leasing city-owned Lunken Airport to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

• Sell city-owned parking lots and other city-owned real estate, including the Burnet Avenue parcel where the Health Department headquarters now resides.

• Pilot a gainsharing program to seek employee recommendations to save money and share the savings with them. Estimated savings: $10 million over 10 years.

Growing a PowerhouseStartup

NEW LEADERS AT FOUR CINCINNATI STARTUP ORGANIZATIONS ARE UPPING THEIR GAME TO PROVIDE THE REGION’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST ENTREPRENEURS WITH MORE RESOURCES.

BY SARAH M. MULLINS

Cincinnati has made a name for itself over the past 10-15 years as a Midwest hub for startups, with the surge in entrepreneurial activit y transforming the region’s economic landscape. The journey to becoming a startup hotspot leveraged strategic partnerships with universities, businesses, and government to build key relationships, provide mentorship, and cultivate funding opportunities that are harder to come by outside of the East and West coasts.

The local ecosystem boasts impressive numbers, with more than 450 startups and a total

of 5,148 jobs created, along with $680 million in total funding raised by area startups just in 2022. Cincinnati sits 41st in the U.S., according to Startup Blink’s Startup Ecosystem Index rankings.

Many across the region argue that Cincinnati is perfectly positioned for additional success thanks to the combination of access to a variety of higher education institutions, seven Fortune 500 companies, and award-winning healthcare systems. Organizations like CincyTech, Cintrifuse, Main Street Ventures, and the University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub are at the

EMMA OFF Photographed at CincyTech on June 20, 2024.

forefront of this transformation—providing support to aspiring entrepreneurs, strengthening the region’s development and attraction for talent and future innovators, and raising and attracting capital.

All four organizations, coincidentally, have changed leadership recently. Each key executive shares his or her thoughts on how to boost the region’s startup scene to the next level.

CINCYTECH

NATIVE CINCINNATIAN

Emma Off took the CEO reins at CincyTech in January following a legal career focusing on private capital and mergers and acquisitions. Her new role is a natural mix of things she’s passionate about: supporting founders, venture development and economic growth, and private capital activation and deployment.

Off’s background in complex reorganizations, mergers, and acquisition at Thompson Hine align with the complex nature of startups and the capital challenges that Cincinnati startups face. “In private practice, I saw firsthand the limited organized private capital infrastructure in our region,” she says. “I also saw economic, job, and population growth data regarding our metropolitan statistical area, and I grew concerned that if more private capital was not activated around high-growth business opportunities, we would continue to fall behind peer cities located in the Midwest.”

The biggest hurdle all first-time founders face is a lack of capital, which is particularly true here. Based on PitchBook and Census data, Cincinnati ranks behind Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis for available seed funding. Off says for every dollar of research and development spent at research institutions in Ohio, including healthcare systems,

there’s not even 10 cents in private capital to monetize and capitalize on such research. “Many of the companies we invest in are commercializing novel intellectual property from a research institution or abandoned by a big company,” she says. “CincyTech helps match these big ideas with experienced executives to help commercialize the idea.”

Since 2007, CincyTech has invested in 90 portfolio companies across life sciences and technology sectors and invested $90 million in portfolio companies, which has attracted $1.8 billion in co-investment. Its involvement with early-stage life sciences and healthcare investing remains important, since six of the top 10 employers in Cincinnati are healthcare or research organizations.

CincyTech portfolio company Enable Injections is one of many Cincinnati-based private and public research organizations that have received more than $365 million in venture capitalist funding and more than $1.3 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. CincyTech leverages an experienced team as the only early-stage investor in Ohio that’s supported by two PhDs, two former healthcare executives, a pharma executive, a former digital health executive, and graduate students from the University of Cincinnati.

“CincyTech will continue to focus on where we’ve demonstrated a right to win,” says Off. “That’s being a key launch partner to novel innovations and technologies, particularly in life sciences and healthcare.”

In addition to providing capital, CincyTech plays a vital role in activating deal flow, providing mentorship to first-time founders, and educating them on market trends, scalability, and exit opportunities. Its portfolio companies have created 1,500 jobs with an average salary of $100,000, and 34 percent are minority- or femalefounded or led. “CincyTech believes passionately in supporting underrepresented founders to promote a more inclusive en-

trepreneurial community in Cincinnati,” says Off, who succeeded longtime leader Mike Venerable in January.

CincyTech aims to cement its position as a leader in early-stage life investing, leveraging Cincinnati’s strengths in the healthcare and life sciences sector. “At the end of the day, it all goes back to helping find, fund, grow, and exit world-changing ideas,” says Off. “Ideas that will change how drugs are delivered, how diseases are treated, how illnesses and injuries are diagnosed, how information is aggregated and managed to change patient outcomes. We will continue to work with our ecosystem partners to activate more capital in our region and get much-needed capital to high-growth businesses.”

CINTRIFUSE

FOUNDED BY EXECUTIVES

from one of Cincinnati’s Fortune 500 companies, Procter & Gamble, Cintrifuse has been a cornerstone of Cincinnati’s startup ecosystem since day one. The organization is dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship in a range of avenues, including the newly launched Venture Velocity program that will accelerate the growth of startups. The eight-week cohort-based program is key to connecting startups with essential resources, mentors, and investors crucial for their success in Cincinnati’s startup ecosystem.

“We’re the champion and the cheerleader, and we collaborate with everyone in that ecosystem,” says Cintrifuse CEO J.B. Kropp. “It could be helping a Main Street business like a bake shop all the way to a high-tech company. We try to make sure we’re the front door to the ecosystem.” Kropp is no stranger to the startup world. He was a co-founder of seed-stage accelerator The Brandery, a co-founder of Main Street Ventures, and has spent

time at Twitter and Gorilla Glue, and founded startups of his own. He’s now leading strategy and operations for Cintrifuse Capital, which is the venture capitalist arm of Cintrifuse.

Kropp says that startups face three main challenges: capital, customers, and talent. Entrepreneurs and leaders say the same thing when asked what the greatest challenge startups face in Cincinnati: capital. This isn’t unique to Cincinnati, just a primary component of the beginning stages of a startup— but it’s a lot easier to find funding in Silicon Valley or New York, where capital runs deep.

Kropp notes that Cincinnati has always been a conservative town when it comes to risk, while investors on the coasts expect it. Now that Cintrifuse Capital is in town with money to deploy, it gives other investors more confidence that they can co-invest with Cintrifuse. Confidence is built by knowing Cintrifuse is looking at every deal, trying to find the best founders and the best startups to back

J.B. KROPP

in Cincinnati. “We can’t do it alone in Cincinnati,” he says. “We require other investors from outside the region to come in and help support a startup.”

Cintrifuse is a $180 million fund, with $50 million–$80 million going directly to local companies, something that hasn’t been done in the past. So far, Cintrifuse has invested in 12 local startups for a total of about $4 million. The investments have attracted more than $30 million of outside capital into these startups. “The last 10 years of Cintrifuse has been establishing a foundation of entrepreneurship and establishing the ecosystem, the corporations, the local partners,” says Kropp, who succeeded Pete Blackshaw as CEO in March. “Now that we have capital to deploy, the next 10 years will look very different.”

Kropp estimates that they could have upwards of 50–60 portfolio companies in the next couple of years, which he says is a lot of companies to support, find, fund, and grow here in town. “That’s why I’m very excited about this opportunity. We’re going to be putting a lot of capital to work. And putting $50 million in Cincinnati could attract $500 million.”

Cintrfuse has a laundry list of success stories. A few recent ones include:

• Clean Age: Personal care brand that targets GenZ and Gen Alpha with sustainable packaging, betterfor-you ingredients, and gender-agnostic branding.

• LunchTable: A fan activation platform that turns fans of a brand into brand ambassadors who boost brand, marketing, and sales efforts.

• Picture Health: Provides enhanced analysis and insights through AI for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, treatment selection, and tumor monitoring.

Cintrifuse is also working to tackle the talent challenge startups face by hiring a head of network to identify talent looking for their next role and matching them with startups, with the goal of hiring employees here in Cincinnati. The growth in the number of startups will bring trust in the talent market, Kropp says, because it’s sometimes hard to get people to leave their day job to join a high-risk startup.

Cintrifuse recently secured $10 million in funding from Ohio’s State Small Business Credit Initiative matching funds to help establish a $20-million venture capital fund aimed at supporting high-growth startups in Southwest Ohio. The new fund will focus on investing in and scaling early-stage companies, providing them with support and resourcesto navigate growth stages effectively.

MAIN STREET VENTURES

FOUNDED IN 1999, MAIN Street Ventures emerged from a need to provide resources to aspiring entrepreneurs. The initial focus was on establishing a physical space with easy access to internet connections, because as an entrepreneur in Cincinnati you needed access to digital tools and access to inexpensive office space. Main Street Ventures has undergone several chapters over the years, and today it’s a financial engine for startups, providing equity-free grants to fuel early-stage businesses and propel them toward growth.

Executive Director Sean Parker’s passion for entrepreneurship began at a young age. From selling seashells collected on family vacations to mowing lawns in the neighborhood, he maintained the drive to create

and build something of his own. He started his career in public relations and corporate communications but consistently gravitated toward opportunities to support entrepreneurs and contribute to community development. His passion for entrepreneurship ultimately led him to Main Street Ventures in March 2023, when he assumed the top leadership role.

“We’ve aligned ourselves with being the funding and financial engine for startups in Greater Cincinnati,” says Parker. “Essentially, we’re looking to create the United Way of entrepreneurship support in our community and to be at that early stage, to help them with both capital and education and connections to create the next Medpace or TQL to come out of this region.”

Main Street Ventures recognizes the challenges faced by entrepreneurs before their businesses have reached the point of attracting venture capital. By offering equity-free grants to pre-seed and early revenue companies, they provide resources at a time when they can have the most significant impact. The grants can be used for a variety of needs, from product development and marketing to hiring talent and securing equipment.

Main Street Ventures provided 64 grants to small businesses across the Cincinnati region last year, including to brothers David, Fletcher, and Henry Pease, founders of Rekkie smart snow goggles. The grant allowed them to develop their product to the point where they could present it on the TV show Shark Tank, where they received investment from Mark Cuban. Other grant recipients include LuLu’s Sweet Bakery in West Chester, Eve Floral Co., and BlaCk OWned OuterWear; 78 percent of grant recipient found-

ers are considered from underrepresented communities.

Main Street Ventures programs have created 769 jobs in the region and distributed $4.1 million to local startups and businesses. “One of my favorites to talk about is Wyoming Community Coffee,” says Parker. “We provided them with a grant to help them purchase a coffee bean roaster, which allowed them to source their beans from women around the world where coffee is their only or primary source of income. It allowed them to train a couple of their employees on roasting to produce and bag their own coffee beans to sell.”

Parker says the organization places entrepreneurs at the center of everything it does. With a variety of resources and organizations available to them, streamlined communication and collaboration ensure that entrepreneurs don’t waste precious time and resources navigating the system. Ultimately, a thriving ecosystem built on collaboration is the key to moving Cincinnati’s entrepreneurial spirit forward and nurturing business leaders who will shape the city’s future.

1819 INNOVATION HUB

IN UPTOWN’S INNOVAtion District, the University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Hub fosters collaboration among industry, entrepreneurs, and academics. Ryan Hays is a couple of years into his role as UC’s executive vice president and chief innovation and strategy officer,

though the concept for the hub itself dates back to 2013. Through several iterations, the idea evolved from the University of Cincinnati Research Institute, which Hays chaired during his time as President Neville Pinto’s chief of staff, which laid the groundwork for 1819’s core mission: how to bridge the gap between industry and academia.

“The idea of innovation and the intersection of industry and academia has always been a pet project of mine,” says Hays. This passion is evident in his decision to step into the role of chief innovation officer when David Adams departed in late 2022, allowing him to work full-time in this space he cares so deeply about.

At its core, 1819 is a physical place where Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, students, and faculty collaborate. It’s strategically located near trauma-1 hospitals, UC’s main campus, and the UC College of Med-

SEAN PARKER

TAKEAWAYS

A CAPITAL IDEA

The biggest hurdle all first-time company founders face is a lack of capital, which is particularly true in Cincinnati and across the Midwest. Investment funds raised by CincyTech, Cintrifuse, and Main Street Ventures help attract outside investment that otherwise is concentrating on the West and East coasts.

FINDING NEW TALENT

The University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Hub supports funding efforts by those organizations by helping train highly skilled talent that will work at Cincinnati’s newest startups. UC’s co-op program is ranked fourth in the U.S., and its coop students earn a collective $75 million annually.

NEW APPROACHES

CincyTech, Cintrifuse, Main Street Ventures, and the 1819 Innovation Hub have had new leaders take the reins within the past year and a half, and they’re eager to build on their organization’s successes by staying nimble and pivoting to new opportunities.

icine, underscoring its commitment to collaboration and innovation. Originally a Sears, Roebuck & Co. building, the space houses offices from a wide range of businesses, including Fortune 500 and Fortune 1,000 companies, startups, mid-cap companies, and venture funds. University of Cincinnati faculty, staff, and students also have access to resources in 1819, such as the 12,000-square-foot Maker Space, where students have access to 3D printers and woodworking tools, and the 5,000 square-foot eSports Lab.

Notable tenants at 1819 include P&G, Kroger, altafiber, MainStreet Ventures, and Fifth Third Bank. “All of this is literally under one roof,” says Hays. “1819 is the one place in our region where Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, students, and faculty can all work together, side by side, all in one place.”

A challenge facing many businesses and startups is the need for qualified talent. UC’s cornerstone co-op program plays a vital role in developing talent and meeting business demands by giving students in paid, on-thejob experience at a local, national, or international business, benefiting both students and the local startup and business ecosystem. Some UC majors require co-ops, which provides a significant volume of available talent in the region. UC is ranked fourth in the nation for co-op and internships by U.S. News and World Report, and its co-op students earn a collective $75 million annually.

“Co-op gives companies, both big corporations and startups, a chance to test drive talent, which is a great way to figure out if it’s going to be a good fit for your organization from a culture and chemistry standpoint, but also a competency standpoint,” says Hays. “Being able to test drive that talent in a low-stakes way, because it’s only a semester commitment. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, both parties are able to part ways and there’s not sunk costs in terms of hiring a new employee and realizing they’re not a good fit.”

UC’s enrollment goal is to reach 60,000 stu-

dents by 2030 in order to meet what Hays says is an acute regional need for young talent. In addition to students providing temporary talent, roughly half of UC’s alumni base stay within the Cincinnati region and meet area talent needs.

“We take a lot of pride in the fact that so many Bearcats stay here in Cincinnati and build businesses, build families, and build networks,” says Hays.

Looking ahead, Hays is motivated by the sustainable growth potential from leveraging UC assets and talent as well as from collaboration opportunities. “For so many years, we’ve focused on downtown, which has been a great success for Cincinnati,” he says. “But we’re flying on one engine. There’s an opportunity to launch uptown as an engine of growth for Cincinnati and start to fly on two engines. We’ll be able to go much farther much faster if we get uptown and downtown working in concert. We’re ready to have 1819 and the Cincinnati Innovation District play our part in helping Cincinnati grow in all the right ways that will be successful.”

RYAN HAYS

Rooney IP Protects your Innovation

Interview with Kevin Rooney of Rooney IP

What sets Rooney IP apart from many other Intellectual Property Law Practices?

Kevin: My primary goal four years ago property law.

Can you explain what you mean by Kevin: best for them.

when it comes to intellectual property?

Kevin: those rights. Aren’t patents expensive to both obtain and maintain, let alone enforce? Is it worth it?

Kevin: a belief that they will be “buried” in sighted. You should pursue obtaining

Picking Up the Pace at Madison Square

MEDPACE INVESTS IN MADISONVILLE AND THE CITY AT LARGE, WITH ANOTHER $327 MILLION EXPANSION ON THE WAY.

BY LEYLA SHOKOOHE

Businesses that invest in their local community and economy are nothing new, but Medpace has embraced that notion more than ever before, thanks in part to a recent incentive package from the city of Cincinnati. The international contract research organization has been headquartered in Madisonville since 2012, relocating there after a stint in Norwood. Medpace will utilize the incentive package to invest another $327 million at the intersection of Madison and Red Bank roads and continue to carve a home in Madisonville for themselves and their employees.

“We need more space, but we need people to have easy access in person to each other,” says Steve Ewald, the company’s general counsel, chief compliance officer, and corporate secretary. “That’s why we did a campus, but that’s also why we have amenities on campus like the food hall.”

Medpace is located on roughly 30 acres of land that currently hosts five office and retail buildings, the Summit Hotel, and Element Eatery. It’s also proper ly known as Madison Square, something

Ewald wants to make clear.

“We rebranded it to Madison Square because we wanted it to have its own identity,” he says. “Element Eatery is not on the Medpace campus, it’s at Madison Square. Medpace’s offices are at Madison Square. The Summit Hotel sits at Madison Square. We don’t want people to think this is captive land that isn’t open to the public, so we’ve created a nice hospitality destination here that not only services Medpace but is an important asset to the community and the city of Cincinnati.”

August Troendle, M.D., who serves as CEO and board chairman, founded Medpace in 1992 as Medical Research Studies. As the region’s largest contract research organization, Medpace manages the development of drug and device medical testing for submission to the FDA within the U.S. or the CMA outside of the country. The company partners with a drug or device developer, assists with development of the trial, and then runs with it.

“We manage all aspects of that trial,” says Amy Callow, vice president of human relations and assistant general counsel. “Setting up the contracts, finding the locations, finding the patients. Monitoring and making sure the data are correct and accurate. Taking the samples. We have in-house labs at various locations inside and outside the U.S., so sometimes we’ll also do the laboratory side of it, where we’ll collect samples and do testing. Then we also have a data side that does all the analysis and draws conclusions for the test going forward.”

Medpace also has a regulatory function, working with its partner companies to get FDA approval. The five buildings at Madison Square include two offices, a lab building, a

logistics building, and a clinical pharmacology unit, or CPU. “We have a Phase 1 clinic that we refer to as CPU, which is when a drug or device is used for the first time in humans,” says Callow. “We also have our Medpace Reference Laboratory, MRL, and that does the sample testing. We also have a Biological Lab, MBL, here in Cincinnati.”

The company has grown to almost 6,000 employees worldwide, with a total of 2,317 locally. The city’s incentive package, the largest in Cincinnati history, will help fund a new office tower to hold an additional 1,500 workers, which Medpace will spread across all company functions.

“Our growth is organic, and that’s important to us because we pride ourselves on our employees and how we train them,” says Callow. “We do believe that we’ve built a better widget here and we have the most effective and seamless way of running a clinical trial.”

THE NEW TOWER WILL rearrange some of the existing campus footprint, as the CPU building is moving to another piece of property Medpace purchased on Hetzell Avenue, the street behind Madison Square, and the current CPU building will be repurposed into the new tower.

“We wanted to keep that centrally located in the campus because what’s important around the Medpace operations is that we have good flow between the buildings,” says Ewald. “We’re big enough now that we can’t house everybody in one building, but we have a lot of necessary interaction among all our different functional units. That’s why we remain office-based.”

The company is adamant about

WELCOME IN

The Summit Hotel helps make Madison Square a destination for city residents and visitors alike.

facetime and real-life interactions for its employees. During the peak of COVID-19, most employees worked on staggered schedules. Medpace now offers some built-in schedule flexibility to work from home, but being physically present at Madison Square is vital for operations.

“It is really, really important, given the nature of what we do, that people have plenty of facetime,” Ewald says. “We do a lot of training of new people. We’re a highly regulated industry when it comes to executing on clinical trials, and it’s very precise work. We’re dealing with the safety of testing products on humans, and we take that very seriously. It’s important that people are well-trained and have great mentorship. Maintaining our culture of quality is enhanced significantly by being in person.”

Callow agrees. “It’s important to us to be working together and to collaborate strongly,” she says. “Employees are allowed to work from home about half the month and the other half they’re required to be in the office. We hire a lot of people fresh out of universities, and since they’re just starting their careers being in the office, in my opinion, is the best way to learn how to work in the corporate world.”

Medpace’s office buildings themselves are designed for maximum collaborative opportunities. The new main headquarters building was completed in 2021, with seven floors, retail storefronts on the ground level, and a free parking garage attached at the back. A light installation in the stairwell atrium of the headquarters building is by Erwin Redl, whose work also lights up the Contemporary Arts Center. Ewald has procured artwork from a variety of artists—including local artists such as Priya Rama—that hangs on walls and in conference rooms, which are named

“WE SEE VALUE IN HAVING AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE AT HEADQUARTERS,” SAYS MEDPACE’S STEVE EWALD. “THANKFULLY THE CITY AND THE STATE HAVE PARTNERED WITH US TO HELP FACILITATE THAT.”

Of course, a company that wants its employees to interface as much as possible would invest in a top-of-the-line office setting for them. Bringing in amenities and creature comforts to keep them satisfied is paramount. “We want these offices to be a place that people enjoy coming to,” says Callow. “We’ve worked hard to put beautiful, inviting workspaces together, and with that comes on-campus amenities and Element Eatery. It’s a gathering spot for not just our employees, of course, but we have people from all over the city coming in to enjoy the food and the bar.”

and prep for growth at this location, but it was in the city of Cincinnati, which was important to us. Moving to Madisonville actually was an opportunity to make a difference and do something different from typical suburban sprawl locations. The fact that it was a brownfield provided us with an opportunity to turn underutilized property into something that would enhance not only the Madisonville community but also the entire city of Cincinnati.”

In 2009, the Madison Road corridor was identified in the city’s GO Cincinnati (Growth and Opportunities) Study as a “new growth opportunity area.” “The Madison Road Corridor as ideally located to be a prime location for a complex office/retail/high density housing concentration,” the study said, and “can provide the ‘drivable suburban’ office location that the city is currently lacking and mix it in with a walkable redevelopment of historic Madisonville. Due to its proximity to I-71, the CBD (downtown), and large swaths of excellent demographics, this corridor has a strong opportunity to capture growth in office and supporting retail demand.”

for Greek gods and mathematicians, among others.

“Every floor is different,” he says. “This floor’s Greek. We have rivers of the world, which are rivers in cities where we have offices. We have a superheroes floor, really a Marvel floor. We also have a musician floor. It’s a lot of fun.”

FROM THE BEGINning, Madisonville presented an attractive opportunity for Medpace to move to from Norwood when its lease expired. “It really was an opportunity to consolidate,” says Ewald. “We looked at Northern Kentucky and at this site, and we saw a real opportunity to make a difference here. Not only was there enough land to consolidate

That same year, city leaders approved an ordinance to apply to the Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund on behalf of RBM Development, an entity owned by Troendle. The fund was granted and applied to remediation of the former NuTone manufacturing site, which encompassed almost 30 acres.

Medpace moved operations to Madisonville in 2010 and became deeply enmeshed in the neighborhood when it joined the Madisonville Community Council. “We kept hearing that the community council had a primary focus of the residents

and no one was necessarily paying attention to what the business needs were, and it was a distraction for community leaders,” says Ewald. “So we said, We’ll organize the businesses and create a platform for them to address the small business growth and opportunities here in Madisonville. There’s a lot of stuff we’ve done to really be a responsible member of the community that you don’t normally see big companies do, because we don’t view ourselves as a big company. I know we are, but we didn’t start that way. We don’t carry ourselves that way. We really are individuals and part of the community in which we live, and you see that

in the personality and disposition of folks here.”

Medpace has expanded its undeveloped land with the procurement of properties on the other side of Hetzell Avenue behind Madison Square. Other potential sites for the office tower construction included company locations in Denver and in Irving, Texas.

“At each step, we reevaluate whether we want to continue to invest here and do what’s most efficient not only for our business operations but for our capital deployment,” Ewald says. “Fortunately, we’ve been able to align those things in Madisonville. We’re not adverse to ex-

panding elsewhere, and certainly for hiring that could be beneficial. But we see value in having as many people as possible at headquarters, and thankfully the city and the state have partnered with us to help facilitate that.”

Seeking inspiration for how to expand Madison Square, the company looked at the redevelopment of Summit Park in Blue Ash from an airfield to retail and restaurant public spaces. “We think having an attractive park-like environment for our employees shouldn’t exclude the community,” says Ewald. “What you’ll see with the next phase of what we’re doing with this new tower is

EXPANSION MINDED

Amy Callow and Steve Ewald see Medpace’s campus growth, which includes Element Eatery (opposite page), benefitting Madisonville and the city of Cincinnati as well.

TAKEAWAYS

GROWTH IS A GO

Medpace is investing $327 million at its Madisonville campus to build a new office tower and add 1,500 jobs. The expansion is being spurred by an tax incentive package from the city of Cincinnati, the largest in city history, in order to boost development gains in the eastside neighborhood.

ENCOURAGING FACE TIME

Medpace requires its employees to be physically present most of the time at its Madison Square facilities. “We’re a highly regulated industry when it comes to executing on clinical trials in humans, and it’s very precise work,” says General Counsel Steve Ewald. “It’s important that people are well-trained and have great mentorship.”

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

A new public park will open next to the planned office tower, an important amenity for the Madisonville community as well as Medpace employees, Ewald says. “We want what happens positively in our company to benefit the city.”

a massive public green space nearby.” Both Summit Hotel and Element Eatery are operated separately from Medpace, though they’re managed by AJT Management, an umbrella company of Troendle’s. Originally envisioned as a conference hotel, Summit opened in 2018 and features a single-loaded corridor layout with an impressive atrium; six conferences can run concurrently with a central nourishment hub for the main and breakout rooms. A huge rooftop deck and patio are suitable for business or pleasure. Notable hotel guests have included participants in the Western & Southern Open (now Cincinnati Open) and members of area sports teams such as the Cincinnati Bengals, Cincinnati Reds, and FC Cincinnati.

Element Eatery launched in 2022, with nine restaurants and RJ’s Taproom anchoring the food hall space. “We were open to starting a new location,” says Jack O’Reilly-Tanner, assistant general manager with RJ Brands, which owns RJ’s Taproom. “There was a quick transition to a craft cocktail and taproom experience. It’s a really good relationship. They support us, we support them. Every Tuesday we do a specific Medpace discount for a couple bucks off beer, something like that, which is very much aligned with keeping the employees here.”

Madison Square itself has increased opportunities to extend the experience for employees and patrons alike. The Placebo bar opened in 2022 at the base of Medpace’s HQ building next to the parking garage, and high-end restaurant Alara opened on the opposite side of the building earlier this year. First Financial Bank is on the ground level, and two more ground-level occupants

to be announced later this year.

An outdoor stage is positioned directly across from Element Eatery, with live music and performance programming on Fridays and Saturdays six months of the year. Monday nights are trivia nights, Tuesday nights are for Bingo, and JonJon from Q102 hosts a once-monthly event on Thursdays.

A little further north on Madison Square, heading toward Red Bank Expressway, are newly opened bocce ball courts.

“OUR DESIRE IS TO PRESENT CINCINNATI AS A GREAT PLACE FOR PARTICULARLY YOUNG PROFESSIONALS TO MOVE TO OR, IF THEY’VE COME HERE FOR SCHOOL, TO STAY. WE’VE SEEN AN AMAZING RENAISSANCE IN CINCINNATI.”

“Our growth is nicely aligned and the growth of Cincinnati,” Ewald says. “Our desire is to present Cincinnati as a great place for particularly young professionals to move to or, if they’ve come here for school, to stay. We’ve seen an amazing renaissance in Cincinnati over the last decade. We’re a member of this community, and so we want to be a part of what happens positively in Cincinnati and we want what happens positively in our company to benefit the city.”

PAULA BREHM-HEEGER DAMIAN HOSKINS

EVA JANE ROMAINE COOMBE DIRECTOR

CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

WHAT ARE THE RENOVATION PROJECT’S HIGHLIGHTS?

Our goal is to be a part of the connection between The Banks, Fountain Square, and Over-theRhine. This $43.4-million project re-envisioned the Main Library downtown to meet changing community needs. We redesigned the north and south

plazas along Vine Street, refreshed the interior of the south building, completed an energy retrofit, replaced the south building’s skylight and elevator, and installed a new roof on the north building.

HOW DOES THIS RENOVATION COMPLEMENT RECENT RENOVATIONS AT OTHER BRANCHES? The Cincinnati and

ASK ME ABOUT Reopening the library’s south building downtown on July 12 after extensive renovations.

Hamilton County Public Library kicked off a 10-year Facility Master Plan in 2019. As part of the plan implementation, we so far have upgraded 18 branches and our distribution center.

HOW WILL THESE RENOVATED SPACES BETTER SERVE LIBRARY USERS? Our goal is for the Main Library to be a destination

that people want to visit and a welcoming space for everyone. We’ll have something for all ages, including spaces designed for kids, teens, and adults, as well as an intuitive connection to the building’s upper floors accessed through a new, eye-catching staircase. We’ve also seen tremendous demand for

meeting rooms and small study spaces, and we’re thrilled to make more of them available. Finally, we’re pleased that we were able to replace several elevators throughout the Main Library. Being an accessible space to everyone is a top priority.

–ELIZABETH MILLER WOOD

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

ELEMENTZ HIP HOP CULTURAL ART CENTER

ASK ME ABOUT The organization’s move this summer to a new 5,000square-foot location at Teri Studios.

?

WHY DID RED BIKE PAUSE OPERATIONS IN MARCH 2024 WHEN DID IT OFFICIALLY RE-OPEN? Red Bike is a 501c3 nonprofit, and the board of directors voted to liquidate assets after its chief sponsor, UC Health, could no longer fund operations. Red Bike officially re-opened on May 13.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT FINANCIAL STATUS OF RED BIKE? A coalition of partners raised more than $500,000 to fund operations through at least April 2025.

WHAT FINANCIAL MILESTONES WOULD BE NECESSARY TO ENSURE RED BIKE CAN RUN INDEFINITELY OR AT LEAST FOR A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME? A coalition of partners including the city, the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, Haile Foundation, and Metro are working with a nonprofit consultant on the long-term business

plan for Red Bike. We will have that completed by the end of this year.

WHAT KEY VALUES DO YOU SEE RED BIKE ADDING TO THE CITY’S URBAN CORE? First, their Go Pass program makes Red Bike available for folks on public assistance and provides a mode of transportation for people to get to school, shopping, work, etc. This is the only mode of transportation for many. Second, Red Bike provides joy to residents and tourists alike who use it to get short distances in our urban core. Having this asset is a critical service for those coming to our city and conveys an important symbolic message to all of the area’s accessibility. –E.M.W.

HOW WILL THE NEW SPACE HELP ADVANCE ELEMENTZ’S MISSION? The new space will provide an opportunity to reimagine our program offerings, work intentionally with like-minded nonprofit organizations to create a network of safe spaces for youth, and also work toward creating a safer city where our young people are informed, inspired, and encouraged to dream big.

MARK JEFFREYS

CITY COUNCILMEMBER

CITY OF CINCINNATI

ASK ME ABOUT Red Bike reopening after a brief pause in operations.

HOW DOES THE ORGANIZATION’S FOUNDING MISSION CONTINUE TO IMPACT YOUNG ADULTS? Elementz was the brainchild of four community organizers responding to the murder of Timothy Thomas in 2001 and the civil unrest that followed. We are committed to exposing our young people to college and career pathways in the creative fields. We leverage hip-hop culture to do so be-

cause hip-hop is arguably the most impactful and most accessible American art form in existence.

WHAT IS THE NEW CREATIVE FUTURES MOBILE UNIT? It was a vision made possible through the generosity of the Haile Foundation. As a result of the pandemic, we experienced significant declines in attendance at our center, and our team and board of direc-

tors wanted us to intentionally “meet our families where they are.” We’re currently getting the Creative Futures Mobile Unit outfitted with dance, music production, and videography and photography equipment, with the goal of taking our programming to schools, churches, community centers, and citywide events. –E.M.W.

EVERYTHING OLD CAN BE NEW AGAIN

Rumpke operates one of the nation’s largest recycling facilities, making St. Bernard a hub for the economy and the environment.

–JOHN FOX

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

CATHERINE VIOX

and equipment maintenance.

The Rumpke Recycling Facility in St. Bernard runs two shifts per day processing about 55 tons of waste an hour. The third shift focuses on cleaning

A RECYCLING HUB

Rumpke’s Recycling Facility in St. Bernard accepts residential waste from across the Cincinnati region as well as from Dayton and the Miami Valley area, Louisville, south central Indiana, and eastern Ohio. It’s the fourth largest facility in North America, processing about 700 tons of paper, metal, glass, and plastic per day.

INVESTING IN THE FUTURE

Rumpke built the St. Bernard facility from scratch in 2013, replacing the previous building that was destroyed in a fire. The initial investment was $32 million, and the company has spent several million dollars more in recent upgrades to add AI robotic technology to assist with sorting plastics, as well as other improvements.

HANDS ON

The facility’s key job is separating waste into specific categories of recyclable material, and the process starts with staff manually pulling out items that can’t be recycled by Rumpke, from lumber to license plates to rubber duckies. Equipment then uses magnets, air puffs, robotic arms, and good old-fashioned gravity to divide cardboard from cans and clear plastic from color plastics.

ADDING CAPACITY

Rumpke’s new Hefty ReNew program allows curbside recycling of previously hard-to-recycle plastics in orange bags put out with normal recycling. This material is shipped to end users that can convert it into plastic pellets, plastic lumber, and other construction materials.

A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Once the recyclable material is separated, it’s baled and shipped via truck or rail to end users who do the actual recycling. Nearly 95 percent goes to manufacturers within a 250-mile radius of Cincinnati, with around 80 percent staying in Ohio. It takes about 60 days for an aluminum can to return to a store shelf after it’s been tossed in the recycling cart.

ECONOMIC GROWTH STARTS HERE.

•For every dollar spent on training employees at Cincinnati State’s WDC, businesses receive a $33 ROI.

•85% of Cincinnati State’s alumni remain in the regional economy.

•Cincinnati State and its students support one out of every 134 jobs in the area.

Cincinnati State has been a part of every economic recovery in our region for over 50 years and will continue to lead workforce development through exceptional real-world, hands-on learning, quality transfer education and technical training.

Start by accelerating the potential of your employees through our Workforce Development Center (WDC): Amy Waldbillig, Vice President, Workforce Development (513)569-1643 or amy.waldbillig@ cincinnatistate.edu

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