Rolling out the welcome mat
Ohio,
Michigan search out new ideas to combat an old problem — attracting more people PAGE 8
Data demand sparks opportunity
Eaton and Lubrizol hope to cash in on industry growth
By Dan Shingler
In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. electric system is handling some very large loads and preparing to take on many new sources of demand — some the size of cities — as data centers, cryptocurrency mines and other huge power consumers come online. at growth is coming faster than those who supply the na-
tion’s power expected, too. e publication Utility Dive reported at the end of 2023 that grid planners were predicting demand to grow by 4.7% over the next ve years, doubling their 2022 estimates, with peak demand expected to grow by 38 gigawatts over that timeframe. at’s enough power to sustain about 28.5 million new homes coming online. It’s presenting a challenge to
electric grid operators, utilities, power generators and data centers, but also creating an opportunity for companies that serve those industries, including Eaton and Lubrizol.
Eaton addresses the challenges facing customers that operate large computer centers as well as those who provide and deliver power to everyone, said Angie McMillin, president of
Keeping Browns downtown about more than money
Advocates says moving the team to Brook Park would harm development, vision for Cleveland
By Kim Palmer
After both Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne stated publicly that they want the Cleveland Browns to remain at the current lakefront stadium site after the 2028 lease expires, Downtown Cleveland CEO Michael Deemer is joining the chorus.
How and how much the public pays for whichever stadium the Browns eventually call home has been the main focus of discussion to date. But these downtown advocates argue keeping the team on the lakefront after the 2028 lease expires is not just about the nancing.
It’s true that the Browns’ eight regular season home games and other events at the stadium are critical to some restaurants and smaller retail with “razor-thin margins,” Deemer, president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Inc., told Crain’s in a recent interview.
But downtown o ers some incredible opportunities for organizations such as HSG, he said.
Deemer noted that Cleveland over the last 15 years has seen more than $1 billion in infrastructure investment downtown. e city is part of a national trend moving development away from the suburbs and toward walkable, 15-minute cities.
A potential move to Brook Park is a move away from density and transformational development, Deemer said. “ at other option is to start from zero and try to build the exact thing that is happening here,” he said. “Building fake cities in the suburbs has a negative impact on downtowns. As a region, we have worked on combating sprawl and focused on building up the city, building up the core and growing from there.”
The stadium is set to become an integral part of the downtown-to-lakefront connection puzzle, Deemer said. The planned Northcoast Connector “land bridge” at East Ninth will make getting to the stadium on
Parma’s Ridgewood Golf Course to break ground on clubhouse
funding, according to the Parma Sun Post.
e biggest sports-related construction project taking place near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport isn’t in Brook Park. It’s in Parma.
And to city residents, the new clubhouse at Ridgewood Golf Course is a very big deal.
“I’ve lived here my entire life and I rarely go somewhere where people aren’t asking me, ‘When are you starting construction? When will it be completed?’ ” Parma’s recreation department director, Mickey Vittardi said. “ ere’s a genuine excitement throughout the entire city and beyond.”
e city will hold the o cial groundbreaking for the $12.3 million project at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 14, although contractors have been working on site since Aug. 5. e event center was designed by American Structurepoint, with Albert M. Higley Co. serving as the construction manager-at-risk.
e new clubhouse will likely open in August or September of 2025, just ahead of the course’s 100-year anniversary in 2026. e 11,400-square-foot structure will include a new event center with a grill and bar/lounge area capable of hosting 180 people (or being divided into three smaller rooms), a patio, six golf simulator bays, a pro shop and a pavilion.
“ is will be an economic driver for our city,” Vittardi said. “Golfers and non-golfers can use the facility for lunch and dinner, for entertainment out on the patio, or they can rent one of the three halls in the event center for baptisms, birthday parties and larger events. It’s a great project.”
Parma City Council voted to issue $14 million in bonds earlier this year for the project, and Cuyahoga County Council provided $4 million from its American Rescue Plan Act
“ at ($4 million) was a nice injection to get us started on the entire project,” service department director Tony Vannello said. e course’s previous clubhouse was torn down in 2022. Ridgewood has used a triple-wide trailer over the past two years, yet the course managed to turn more than $200,000 in pro t last year, Vittardi said. ( e course has turned a pro t every year since 2019.)
“I’ve been the recreation director for over 20 years and we’ve been on borrowed time, quite honestly, most of that time,” Vittardi said. “ e building was just old and we did our best — and the employees did our best — to keep it as presentable as we could. But, quite frankly, with the building 100 years, there were so many areas where, if we went to repair things, it was putting good money after bad.”
Both Vittardi and Vannello praised Ridgewood’s course superintendent, Tyler Good, for making numerous course upgrades during his 11-year tenure, from improving tee boxes and greens to upgrading the irrigation system. O cials are also looking to upgrade the cart paths.
"We're always polishing that diamond," Vannello said.
ose improvements help Ridgewood feel more like a private course — and the new clubhouse will only add to that vibe, Vittardi said.
“We have people playing the course now that haven’t played it in years and their response is consistently, ‘Wow, I don’t remember it this way,’” Vittardi said. “Ridgewood is a municipal golf course — it’s owned and operated by the city of Parma — but people nd it hard to believe it’s a municipal golf course when they play it, and that’s because of the hard work of Tyler and his people.”
Events wreak havoc with Browns, Guardians grass
For Cleveland’s tourism industry, it’s worth it
By Joe Scalzo
Since June, Cleveland Browns Stadium has hosted the Rolling Stones and SummerSlam and both events were killer.
To the grass.
e WWE event earlier this month drew an event-record crowd of 57,791 to the lakefront, which was great for Cleveland’s tourism industry but bad for the Browns’ playing surface.
Between setup and teardown, the grass is covered for seven days, which means in order to meet NFL eld standards, it had to be completely re-sodded between Saturday, Aug. 4 (when the last of the WWE trucks loaded out after the event) and Saturday, Aug. 10, for the Browns’ preseason opener against the Green Bay Packers.
“By Sunday night, we were removing the eld covering and by Monday morning, our grounds team started to re-sod,” Michele Powell, vice president of event development for the Haslam Sports Group, said “ ey have virtually ve days to get a re-sod down and in good condition to be ready for Saturday’s game."
e Cleveland Guardians faced an even tighter turnaround following the July 30 concert with Journey and Def Leppard at Progressive Field. e team played at Detroit that night, had a day o , then hosted the Baltimore Orioles on Aug. 1.
But because the concert stage was in left eld — and because the loading trucks could enter and exit through the left eld wall — the Guardians only had to replace
a small section of grass near the warning track. e new grass is in great shape — all professional teams have relationships with sod farms — but it does take some time to settle, and it can occasionally result in a tricky hop in the out eld where the old grass and new grass come together.
“We’ve learned from past (events) it’s best to remove the turf before the stage gets set up,” Curtis Danburg, the Guardians' vice president of communications and community impact, wrote in an email. “It arrived the day after (the concert) and the grounds crew rolled it in around 24 hours before the rst pitch.”
In the Browns’ case, the grass had already been torn up by the Rolling Stones concert at the stadium on June 15. Because it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to completely re-sod the eld, and because the Browns didn’t have any secondary events planned (like a soccer game, for instance), they waited until after SummerSlam to replace the turf.
e grounds crew have to do it again next month following the Billy Joel/Rod Stewart concert at the stadium on Sept. 13, although they'll have a little bit more time since Cleveland plays in Jacksonville on Sept. 15 before returning home on Sept. 22.
“It puts pressure on them, but these are major events, not only for the building but for the city and this region,” Powell said.
“When you can get the biggest names in the industry, that’s something we obviously want to do. If you can work through the nancials and the logistics of doing it, having a major concert is well worth it.”
e Browns rarely host big
events during the fall, both because it’s hard to schedule around NFL games and because, well, it’s an open-air stadium on Lake Erie. But that could change if the team builds a dome in Brook Park, regardless of whether it’s a stadium with arti cial turf (like nearby Ford Field in Detroit or Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis) or one with real grass (like Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas or State Farm Stadium in Arizona). e latter two grow the grass outdoors and then use a retractable eld tray to move it inside the stadium before games.
“When you have that type of contraption, there’s a cement oor underneath so you can do a concert, a car show or a million di erent events,” Powell said. “And with turf, you don’t have to re-sod the eld, so Indy and Detroit can play a concert on a Wednesday night and hold a football game on Saturday. So a dome gives you opportunities to hold events 365 days a year, whereas obviously an outdoor stadium in Cleveland, Ohio, has di erent limitations.”
If — or, more likely, until — the Browns build a dome, Powell will do the best she can to attract as many events as possible to the lakefront, even if
As SummerSlam showed, there’s a bright side to herbicide.
“It was the largest-attended, highest-grossing SummerSlam ever, and it was a huge success in everyone’s eyes,” she said. “We had well over 50,000 people in this building for this unique event and to see people along Dawg Pound Drive starting at 11 a.m. and staying until well after midnight was incredible. We were very excited and very happy about it.”
LA Knight hits Logan Paul with a suplex off the top rope during SummerSlam at Cleveland Browns Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 3. The Browns’ grounds crew replaced the grass after the event and ahead of the team’s preseason
Joe Scalzo
Progressive’s CEO headlines group of 15 women investors in NWSL bid
By Joe Scalzo
Cleveland’s bid for an expansion National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team keeps getting progressively better. Also, Progressive-ly.
Progressive Insurance president and CEO Tricia Gri th headlines a list of 15 area women who have joined Cleveland Soccer Group (CSG) as investors in the prospective NWSL team. CSG recently submitted its bid to become the league’s 16th team, which will begin play in 2026. e NWSL is expected to make its decision sometime in the fourth quarter of 2024.
“Women have been a driving force in a watershed couple of years for sports, innovation and athletes across the industry,” Gri th said in a news release on ursday, Aug. 8. “And it’s just the beginning of this new era. My co-investors and I are proud to help Cleveland get into the game.”
In an interview with Crain's Cleveland, CSG co-founder Michael Murphy said he wanted to add more women and more diversity to his investment group — Minter Smyers, Kirkpatrick and Whiting have all been named Black Professionals of the Year by the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation — and said ursday’s commitment grew out of existing relationships with some of the investors, particularly Minter Smyers, Hanson and Fine.
(Among other Crain's recognitions those involved have received: Minter Smyers, Benacci, Rich Fine, Tomallo, Kirkpatrick and Whiting are all former Women of Note honorees, while Cahlik is a former 40 Under 40 honoree.)
“It came out of talking to them about the opportunity and
asking, ‘Would the people in their network be interested in the opportunity?’ ” he said. “And there was a lot of interest. (Cofounder) Nolan (Gallagher) and I spent a fair amount of time giving di erent presentations to groups at various times over the last several months and this is the culmination of those e orts.”
Gri th met with 11 members of investment group earlier this month and has been one of the bid's strongest supporters, both publicly and privately, Murphy said.
“She really believes in this as a good play for Cleveland and a great play for equity,” he said. “As a Fortune 100 CEO, she sees the economic bene ts, too. It’s good all the way around.”
Although CSG submitted its official bid weeks ago, the group is still looking to build on it, literally and figuratively.
CSG is looking to build a $150 million, 12,500-seat downtown stadium, which would be the first in Ohio specifically built for women’s professional sports — and just the second nation-
ally. Also, the group recently put in an offer on Notre Dame College’s campus in South Euclid, with plans to build a training facility on the campus of the recently closed school.
“We’ve been very public about our desire to be the 16th club and, when we have good news, we let stakeholders know — whether that’s the city, elected o cials, the league or the fans.”
Cleveland also has a sense of urgency about this year’s bid, which comes after nishing in the nal four for the last round of expansion in November 2022. NWSL team values have skyrocketed in recent years, attendance for this year’s games is up more than 40% and
women’s soccer tooksome of the spotlight at the Olympics.
ere were 19 NWSL players on Team USA’s roster and 56 NWSL players overall competed in this year’s Games.
“Women’s sports just keep getting bigger,” Murphy said. “With soccer, it’s really exciting to have our club in the gold medal match. It’s going to be one of the highest-rated events of the Olympics and having 19 women on that national team playing in the NWSL, that’s a home run.
“We’re really excited about the chance to bring some of the biggest names in professional soccer to Cleveland, whether they’re playing for us or against us.”
Other investors include:
◗ Nancy Benacci: Board member of Cincinnati Financial Corp., The Payden & Rygel Investment Group and Regis Corporation; former managing director and head of equity research at KeyBanc Capital Markets
◗ Kimberly Bigelow: Co-owner of McRann Bigelow Acquisitions
◗ Jaime Buehl-Reichard: CEO of Fowler’s Mill LLC
◗ Carly Cahlik: Founder & CEO of OHR Rents and FleetNow
◗ Juliana Pabon Carrus: Owner of Valley Bloom Therapy Group
◗ Ashley Charek: Principal of Charek Capital
◗ Lauren Rich Fine: Senior managing director of Gries Financial and former managing director of Merrill Lynch Equity Research/NY
◗ Maia Hansen: Current board director of Carlisle Companies Incorporated; former COO at Athersys; and former managing partner (Cleveland Of ce) at McKinsey & Company
◗ Rupal B. Malani, MD: Senior partner at McKinsey & Company
◗ Ariane Kirkpatrick: CEO of The AKA Team, Jabali Development Group and The Mavuno Group
◗ Sarah Rathke: Co-head of the sports & entertainment practice and litigation partner at Squire Patton Boggs
◗ Robyn Minter Smyers: Partner, executive committee member and former partner-in-Charge (Cleveland Of ce) at Thompson Hine LLP
◗ Michelle Tomallo: Co-founder & chief people of cer at FIT Technologies
◗ Vanessa Whiting: President & CEO of A.E.S. Management Corp.
Progressive CEO Tricia Grif th, center, with some of the investors in Cleveland’s prospective National Women’s Soccer League team. | CONTRIBUTED
FirstEnergy pays $19.5M to avoid state charges for HB 6 scandal
By Dan Shingler
vestigation and the OAG Civil Matter.”
FirstEnergy Corp. has paid $19.5 million to the Ohio Attorney General’s o ce as part of an agreement between the two parties, and the Summit County Prosecutor’s o ce, that includes the state not pursuing criminal charges against the company for its role in the House Bill 6 bribery scandal.
FirstEnergy announced Aug. 13, that it had reached the agreement, e ective Aug. 12, “to resolve all outstanding proceedings between the parties,” though it still has outstanding matters with federal regulators and suing shareholders.
e agreement follows an investigation by the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission into the scandal, which broke in 2020 and revealed that FirstEnergy had paid more than $60 million in bribes to former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to pass legislation that would have provided more than a billion dollars in subsidies to nuclear and coal- red electric generation plants the company then owned.
“Based on that investigation, and in consideration of the substantial cooperation provided by FirstEnergy, FirstEnergy’s timely remediation and ongoing investments in its compliance program, and the commitments made by FirstEnergy set forth in this Agreement, the State of Ohio has determined that it will not criminally prosecute the Company in connection with any of the conduct,” the company stated in a ling with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
FirstEnergy, in 2021, paid a federal monetary penalty of $231
million as part of a deferred prosecution deal that included the company admitting “that it paid millions of dollars to an elected state public o cial through the o cial’s alleged 501(c)(4) in return for the o cial pursuing nuclear legislation for FirstEnergy Corp.’s bene t,” the U.S. Attorney’s O ce for Ohio’s Southern District previously stated. e wide-ranging scandal that exploded in 2020 has already resulted in the imprisonment of Householder. Two others indicted in the case — Sam Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and lobbyist Neil Clark, also indicted — have both died by suicide since the scandal broke.
But the company still faces legal issues, including an SEC investigation and shareholder lawsuits claiming the company covered up the scandal and its potential impact on investors.
“Beyond the matters settled by the agreement, currently outstanding are the SEC matter, the securities litigation and regulatory proceedings with the PUCO,” FirstEnergy Corporate Communications Manager Jennifer Young said via email. “At our most recent earnings, we stated that we had reached an agreement in principle with the SEC to resolve claims against the company, and recorded a re-
The company still faces legal issues, including an SEC investigation and shareholder lawsuits claiming the company covered up the scandal and its potential impact on investors.
e new agreement will apparently let FirstEnergy put some legal issues behind it.
“In September and October of 2020, the OAG and certain other parties led complaints against several parties, including the Company … alleging, among other things, civil violations of the Ohio Corrupt Activity Act and related claims in connection with the passage of HB 6,” FirstEnergy said in its SEC ling.
“On August 12, 2024 (the “E ective Date”), the Company entered into the Agreement with the OAG and the Summit County Prosecutor, which fully resolves, in each case with respect to the Company, both the OOCIC in-
serve of $100 million for the settlement. ... Although we have completed the obligations we were required to perform for a three-year period under the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, we will continue to fully cooperate with the Department of Justice on other outstanding matters as well as continue other required obligations, including publishing any payments to 501(c)(4) organizations and political o cials.”
If you are having thoughts of suicide or self harm, please seek immediate help. e Ohio Suicide and Crisis Hotline can be reached by calling 988.
KeyCorp’s CEO calls Scotiabank deal ‘a very exciting day for Key’
By Jeremy Nobile
Early Monday, August 12, it was announced KeyCorp agreed to sell a minority equity stake to e Bank of Nova Scotia — a large Canadian nancial institution operating as Scotiabank — in an estimated $2.8 billion deal that signi cantly boosts the Cleveland company’s capital, positioning it to invest in operations or better weather a possible economic recession in the future.
But Key chairman and CEO Chris Gorman stressed in the wake of the deal announcement that this investment comes for the company while it is in a strong position.
“We were comfortable with our capital position and its trajectory,” Gorman told investors. “We were not seeking capital.”
In a follow-up conversation with Crain’s, Gorman said that he has been having ongoing discussions with Scotiabank president and CEO Scott omson since last fall about company cultures, priorities and ways the two rms might partner together. Earnest conversations about an investment and minority acquisition began to develop more recently since then.
Gorman said that Key had not been looking for other capital infusions like this or discussing investments with any other rms. When the transaction is complete, Scotiabank is expected to become Key’s largest minority shareholder with a 14.9% stake in the company.
He also emphasized that, despite what it may look like from the outside, this investment should not be viewed as Scotiabank kicking the tires on a majority acquisition.
“It is not a step for an acquisition,” Gorman said. “We, Key, are not for sale.”
" is strategic investment in KeyCorp, a premier bank in the U.S., signi cantly increases the capital deployed to our identi ed priority markets," said Scotiabank’s omson in a statement.
"We believe that this transaction provides attractive near-term returns to our shareholders and creates future optionality for Scotiabank in the North American corridor, given our unique position as the only Canadian bank with a presence across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. We look forward to exploring mutually benecial strategic opportunities in the future."
In terms of bolstering capital levels at this time when it’s not entirely needed, Gorman said, “I have always been of the view that you should x the roof when the sun is shining. He said that the equity raise supports Key’s e orts to “play o ense,” which has been part of the company’s key messaging in recent earnings cycles.
Some of the capital will be used to revamp the company’s securities portfolio with higher-yielding assets.
Additionally, Gorman noted that Key is looking to steer growth capital toward its “most important fee-based businesses with even greater intensity.” is includes its wealth management, investment banking and payments businesses.
Gorman also emphasized how Key and Scotiabank could collaborate on potential revenuegenerating opportunities together in the future, noting what that looks like is to be determined.
As an example, though, he pointed to common ground between Key’s Laurel Road division — which is the digital banking platform acquired in 2019 geared primarily toward doctors and dentists that includes a student-loan re nancing business — and Scotiabank’s MD Financial Management. e latter provides nancial services to physicians and their families and added $49 billion in client assets to Scotiabank’s wealth management business when it was purchased in 2018.
More broadly, the additional capital for Key could be deployed for other boutique ntech acquisitions or just more generally bol-
ster reserves as regulatory requirements evolve, such as Basel III, or if the U.S. settles into a recession in coming quarters.
Markets seemed to react positively to the news with Key’s stock price jumping by about 12% on the morning of Aug. 12 to just more than $17 per share. at price came down a bit during the day.
Alexander Yokum, an equity research analyst with CFRA Research, said in a note to investors that his rm was raising its guidance on Key stock from sell to hold.
“We have a positive view of the investment as shares of KEY have been bogged down over the past few years by large unrealized losses in the bank’s securities portfolio. Following the investment, KEY will be well positioned to reposition its securities portfolio, thus improving the bank’s net interest income outlook,” Yokum wrote. “We raise our 12-month target price by $5 to $17, 9.9x our 2025 EPS estimate, modestly below KEY’s ve-year forward P/E average of 10.5x given a weaker net interest margin. We raise our 2024 EPS estimate by $0.02 to $1.12 and increase 2025’s by $0.06 to $1.72.”
“ is is a very exciting day for Key,” Gorman said. “When you have my job, you have a bunch of di erent constituents. It is rare that a single event actually is advantageous for each and every constituent. Sometimes it is a tradeo , whether it’s our employees, our customers, the communities we serve or our shareholders. is is one of those moments that really serves all of our constituents, which is really quite nice.”
Key, the parent company of KeyBank, reported approximately $187.5 billion in assets as of June 30.
Scotiabank is the fth-largest bank in Canada with approximately $1.4 trillion in assets as of April 30. e company also has operations in Mexico and Central America.
Christopher Gorman
e Haslams’ Brook Park blunder
The Haslams have no regard for Cleveland. Business people who profit from the citizens of Northeast Ohio who intentionally desert the urban core for their own ego deserve our condemnation.
The Browns’ revenue in 2022 was $545 million with a profit of $106 million. The Haslams paid $987 million for the Browns in 2012. As of August 2023, the Browns are worth $4.62 billion. According to Forbes, the Haslams are worth $14.4 billion today.
The Haslams are from Knoxville, Tennessee, and also own the Columbus Crew and a share of the Milwaukee Bucks. They are not Clevelanders and clearly have no affection or regard for Cleveland or Clevelanders.
The Haslams’ rent for the stadium has been just $250,000 per year, while the city pays $600,000 per year in property taxes because the Browns are a for-profit business. The stadium is in good repair and does not need a $1 billion makeover. It is something the Haslams want and expect us to pay half.
An issue of enormous significance that
the Haslams have not properly considered is that even if they spend $3.5 billion, manage to get half of that money from public sources and put together a new domed stadium in Brook Park with adequate large parking structures and scores of restaurants, hotels, sports bars, housing and retail spaces, they will perhaps create a destination for eight to 10 football games and a handful of concerts a year. Such a monster development requires a larger population with above-average household incomes than Cleveland has.
It will be a ghost town 350 days a year, and the support food service, entertainment and retail facilities there will fail. It is only a question of time. At the recent panel discussion among stadium economic experts, Brad Humphreys observed, “What professional sports are good at is moving economic activity around to different parts of the city.”
The Haslams’ Brook Park development will siphon off revenue and jobs from downtown’s food and beverage establishments that already are challenged in win -
ter months. This will play out over years with the city’s lifeblood of its urban core dripping away each year.
Downtown provides many things to Browns fans that Brook Park will not: the ability to park in different locations at variable price points, the urban experiences of East 4th Street, the Warehouse District, Playhouse Square, the lakefront (such as it is), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Flats.
Anything the Haslams do in Brook Park will cause pain to downtown’s assets. Within a certain period of time, establishments in those neighborhoods will begin to turn over again, jobs will decrease, and if the Haslams’ development is at all well done and successful — unless Greater Cleveland finally begins to add significant jobs and population — downtown businesses will thin out and go away and we will have even more ground-floor vacancy downtown.
Midwestern Legislative Conference reaf rms partnership with Taiwan
By Vince Guerrieri, Crain’s Content Studio
Throughout the world, Ohio and the Midwest are known for two things: Factories and farms. And that reputation makes those locales apt partners for Taiwan.
e Midwestern Legislative Conference expanded upon the signi cance of the partnership at its annual meeting, held July 2124 in Columbus, by passing a resolution that “rea rms its commitment to the strengthening and deepening of the ties between the 11 U.S. Midwestern states, which comprise the U.S. portion of the MLC, and Taiwan, R.O.C. (Republic of China).”
“Our futures are very closely tied together,” said state Rep. Joel Kitchens, a Republican who represents Wisconsin’s 1st Assembly District, calling Taiwan “a beacon of democracy in the Paci c.”
A breakfast meeting commemorated the relationship by marking the 45th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act.
Jacques deLisle, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, explained the TRA codi ed all the bene ts and policies of a formal diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan without e ectively granting one. e TRA made provisions for Taiwan’s defense while maintaining friendly relations.
“ e TRA has proven to be an enduring, multifaceted and really an accidental success,” deLisle said.
Defense and diplomacy are only part of the TRA. e Act also secures a broader relationship, encouraging commercial and cultural relations — which also contribute to national defense, says Indiana state Rep. David Abbott.
“ e strongest thing we can do is lessen relations with China,” he said. “It would strengthen us and send a message.”
Moreover, the TRA “has helped establish the U.S.-Taiwan rock-solid relationship and ensure peace and prosperity in the Indo-Paci c region,” says Dennis Yen-Feng Lei, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural O ce in Chicago.
e Act’s long and stable tenure o ers a valuable commodity to potential investors
The U.S. ranks as Taiwan’s
and business partners. “If there’s one thing businesses love, it’s predictability,” said Ohio state Rep. C. Allison Russo.
Taiwan, which is the United States’ sixthlargest market for agricultural products and in September 2022 signed purchase agreements for $2.6 billion worth of U.S. corn and soybeans through 2024, views mutuality as essential to broadening relations within the Midwest.
“We are walking a complementary walk with the United States, and we can help,” Lei said. “ e United States is the heart of the world, and the Midwest is the heart of the United States.”
Having just returned from a Ministry of Foreign A airs fellowship to Taiwan, George Williams II, economic recovery corps fellow for the Fund for Our Economic Future, said opportunities abound for Ohio.
“A lot of Taiwanese companies want to take advantage of incentives, and Ohio really does have a lot of strengths,” he said, citing the state’s availability of freshwater – necessary for the advanced semiconductor manufacturing Taiwan is known for — as well as commitments to reshoring manufacturing and revitalizing areas challenged by job losses in traditional industries.
“I really think there’s de nitely some lowhanging fruit,” Williams said.
Robert Schlaeger is the head of U.S. communications for Hon Hai USA, which represents corporate interests in the U.S. for Taiwan-based Foxconn. e company employs 5,500 people in the United States, including in the Midwest, where in 2022 it made one of its most recent purchases, a 6.2 million-squarefoot factory and former General Motors plant in Lordstown.
“ e United States remains the top destination for foreign investment,” Schlaeger said. “ e Midwest is one of (the) regions strongly postured to receive that investment. e state of Ohio has been incredibly supportive at the local and state level.”
Read about the 45th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act and its economic implications for the Midwest at crainscleveland.com/contentstudio/midwest-gains-ground-trading-hubbetween-us-and-taiwan.
For more information on TECO, visit roc-taiwan.org/uschi_en/index.html.
From left, Professor of Law Jacques deLisle, University of Pennsylvania; Director General Dennis Yen-Feng Lei of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Of ce in Chicago; and Wisconsin state Rep. Joel Kitchens open a discussion commemorating 45 years of the Taiwan Relations Act at the 78th Midwestern Legislative Conference Annual Meeting in Columbus on July 22.
William T. Eberhard is principal of Eberhard Architects LLC in Cleveland.
A rendering of the Browns’ proposed domed stadium in Brook Park CLEVELAND BROWNS
POPULATION GROWTH
Rolling out the welcome mat
Ohio, Michigan search out new ideas to combat an old problem — attracting more people
By Dustin Walsh
With populations that peaked two decades ago, Michigan and Ohio have entered a period of stagnation that is stymieing economic investment and well-being. Cities in what was once commonly called the Rust Belt, places like Detroit and Cleveland, have been erased from the epicenter of population growth they held in the post-World War II boom. Michigan’s population has averaged growth of approximately 0.0004% since 2004. e state ranks 49th for population growth in the U.S. Ohio ranks 40th. And if that’s a downpour of bad news now, a ood is coming. Restricted immigration, low birth rates and an eco-
nomic “gray tsunami” from continued baby boomer retirements will further cripple these two states — people 65 and older are expected to grow by 30% by 2050 in Michigan, outnumbering those younger than for the rst time ever, for example, Michigan’s population is expected to decline by 1.3% by 2050. Ohio’s by 5.7%.
But policymakers are waking up to the disastrous reality of population loss — economic fallout, reduced national in uence and poorer conditions for residents. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created a task force to study the issue and installed a population czar last year, while Ohio has launched new workforce attraction tools in an attempt to stave o the consequences.
But can public policy reverse decades of migration to warmer climates and “it” cities capitalizing on youth trends? Would emulating programs from other states, such as cash for down payments on homes, lure residents and stave o the demographic tide of declining birth rates and aging population?
“Part of the challenge for population growth is that no state has come out and comprehensively taken on growth writ large because it’s hard,” said Hilary Doe, chief growth o cer for Michigan. “It doesn’t take six weeks or six months. ere is no silver bullet solution. But it’s necessary as the war for talent has never been more important.”
Michigan’s population e ort is the ‘most comprehensive’ in U.S.
When I was named Michigan’s chief growth o cer last summer, I knew that growing our population was going to require all hands on deck. ere’s a reason we’re the rst state to take this on, and that’s because it’s not easy. It’s not the type of challenge you overcome in one year or one political term.
But that doesn’t make it any less critical. When we’re faced with the hardest of challenges, I’m of the mindset to charge straight toward them — because those are the things I know we’ll overcome, if we take them on together.
To be successful in the long term, growing our population will take policy action, ampli cation of Michigan’s story across the country and around the world, and innovative programs to kick-start growth. With the help of our partners and thousands of Michiganders statewide, Michigan has launched the most comprehensive growth e ort of any state in the nation. And we’re seeing results.
e state’s population growth e ort started last year with the bipartisan Growing Michigan Together Council, who voted to submit three comprehensive strategies and supporting recommendations to the governor and Legislature last December. e members spent months researching, listening and analyzing faster growing peer states, all of which is re ected in their nal report.
When their work concluded, my team was passed the baton to continue building momentum around their recommendations, labeled the blueprint for growth. We’ve seen exciting progress since the Council concluded — and we’re just getting started.
In the 2025 budget Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently signed, real strides were made toward implementation of growth priorities, from $100 million to construct more a ordable housing, to expanding pre-K to every 4-year-old and funding for every Michigan high school grad to attain an associate degree or skilled certi cate for free — a rst step toward the goals laid out in the blueprint.
Plus, the budget prioritized talent and growth with $45.5 million to support Michigan’s workforce needs, as well as population growth e orts. ese are some of the highlights. ese investments make it easier for folks to access opportunity, purchase a home and build a life in Michigan.
To help tell Michigan’s story, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. launched the “You Can In Michigan” campaign last
year, which connects job seekers to employers in Michigan and, more broadly, encourages talent in our state and across the country to choose Michigan. e results have been incredible. e campaign is a recipient of 11 Telly awards, garnered over 2 million website views and attracted 10,000+ sign-ups in the career portal. ese individuals want to live and work in Michigan. Most out-of-state applicants are from Texas, Illinois, California and New York. We’ll continue building on this work with innovative outreach and engagement strategies to stay out front.
e underlying task in much of our work is executing a growth strategy that retains and attracts talent. Like many of our neighbors, Michigan is aging faster than the U.S., with a larger number of folks retiring from the workforce. As our economic opportunities grow, there are even more positions to ll, creating a talent gap.
As the whole world enters the “war for talent,” we know the state must do even better at retaining young families, workers and recent graduates, while welcoming new residents. While many cities and states have launched narrow programs — to attract remote workers, for example — Michigan’s approach is part of a larger strategy that’s inclusive of our diverse communities.
It’s in that context that we’re launching a rst-of-its-kind regional talent retention and attraction pilot program — Make MI Home — designed to help communities establish a unique o ering to either retain or attract folks they consider critical to the growth of their region. We can’t wait to see what they create.
It’s not new for Michigan organizations to tackle local population challenges. is summer, we’ve been traveling the state to highlight and amplify ways regions have incorporated the blueprint for growth into the outstanding work they’re doing to explore opportunities to scale successful initiatives both locally and statewide. We’ve been to Traverse City, Marquette, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Vicksburg. Next up, Detroit.
Growing our population was always meant to be a group project. Over the last year, we’ve spent a lot of time listening and collecting feedback from over 11,000 Michiganders and 6,000 young people across the nation. eir relocation decisions hinge on three things: the need for great places, great opportunities and welcoming communities.
Attracting young people is essential to reversing Midwest population woes
For more than 20 years, Michigan’s population has grown much more slowly than the nation’s. More importantly, Michigan has gotten older as young people are both leaving the state and not choosing to move there.
Population change and economic growth is an issue that will require continual attention and action over the next 25 years in both Michigan and Ohio. A broad array of institutions — government, business, labor and education — must come together to encourage policies that have a positive e ect on the demographic and economic trends in these states.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed the bipartisan Growing Michigan Together Council to consider the problem and recommend policies or actions to alter the trajectory. e council set an ambitious objective — that by 2050 Michigan would be among the top 10 states for population growth and among the top 10 states in median income, educational attainment and migration of young talented workers.
A
20 years is people moving south and west. Research explaining this trend supports the view that people are moving toward the sun — clear days and warmer. Climate change might alter that pattern in the future, but that has not yet happened.
OK, neither Cleveland nor Detroit can replicate Austin’s or Denver’s or San Francisco’s climate. What else might matter?
In Michigan’s case, we know that it is not high taxes a ecting population loss and composition. Tax levels in Michigan are well below the national average, ranking 31st in per capita taxes and 33rd in e ective tax rate. And the ETR in Michigan has been falling. In fact, tax levels in Michigan are lower than in Ohio (8.8% of income vs. 9.4%).
sive reports showing that infrastructure and public education spending had been relatively low and not su cient to maintain service quality.
One strategy Michigan is pursuing is to develop a deep talent base of highly skilled young workers that will attract businesses in growth industries. This requires both having a greater fraction of students completing post-secondary education and enticing those graduates to stay in Michigan. The first is easier than the second. e combination of free community college tuition adopted this year and the Michigan Achievement Scholarship for students at a Michigan public four-year university greatly increases the incentive to attend college.
I believe that Michigan will have done more in this direction than any other state.
common characteristic of states with the highest income and growing economies and are attractive for young workers is an amenity-rich, vibrant and thriving metropolitan area.
e obvious trend over the past
Not only did the low level of taxation not stem the population decline, in fact, low taxes may have contributed to population loss. e council received exten-
However, recent data show that 30% or more of graduates from Michigan’s public universities — both residents of the state and students from other states —
Hilary Doe is chief growth o cer for the state of Michigan.
Ronald C. Fisher is a professor of economics at Michigan State University and a member of the Growing Michigan Together Council.
leave Michigan after graduation for jobs and residence in other states.
How to retain these talented graduates? A three-pronged approach seems promising. First, diversifying the state’s economy with new jobs that are attractive to young technically trained workers seems important. e Michigan economy is still heavily dependent on traditional manufacturing mostly related to automobiles and other vehicles, but that sector has not attracted population or led to growth as in the past.
Second, the state should explore retention incentives, including scholarships tied to Michigan jobs, tax credits for student loans and housing assistance. Just last month the state announced a program for communities to apply for funding to support retention or attraction e orts targeted at a segment of the population speci c to their region.
Finally, a common characteristic of states with the highest income and growing economies and are attractive for young workers is an amenity-rich, vibrant and thriving metropolitan area. us, the council recommended creating “thriving, resilient communities that are magnets for young talent.”
Of course, this is a common challenge for older industrial cities such as Cleveland and Detroit. New and lower-cost housing, better public transit, and reliable infrastructure all may contribute toward this goal.
Cleveland’s strategy to broaden appeal sees success
Great regions and cities begin with a strong core. A vibrant core begins with a clean, safe, attractive environment and compelling pedestrian experiences. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s Reimagining Downtown strategy, for example, is rooted in these principles. Its goal is to accelerate completing downtown’s transformation from a traditional central business district to a dynamic, well-connected neighborhood. e results of implementing Reimagining Downtown are undeniable. Cleveland, once synonymous with Rust Belt decline, has emerged as a model for urban revitalization with our downtown leading the way.
Michael Deemer is president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Inc.
Downtown Cleveland is experiencing a remarkable resurgence, with its population exceeding pre-pandemic levels by 12% and reaching 21,000. Approximately 850 new units are slated for completion through three projects this year alone, with three more buildings in the planning stages. is growth trajectory is expected
to continue, with Downtown Cleveland Inc.’s 2023 Housing Study projecting a population of 29,000 by 2032, supported by an additional 6,500 residential units.
Cleveland is now recognized as a national leader in adaptive reuse, converting vacant o ce spaces into housing at the highest rate in the country.
Downtown Cleveland Inc.’s advocacy for historic preservation has resulted in 10 nationally designated historic districts. By leveraging historic tax credits with other incentives, we are setting an example for other cities facing similar issues.
e focus on residential growth is also driving business decisions. Downtown’s residential growth, especially around Public Square, played a critical role in the Sherwin-Williams Co.’s decision to build its new global headquarters in the Square, adding 3,500 employees to the area.
Enhancing the downtown experience through public space programming and activation is a cornerstone of Downtown Cleveland
Inc.’s revitalization strategy. Inclusive and interactive events further highlight the city center as a vibrant community. Activities such as daily food trucks, free live music and tness classes boost foot tra c, investment and safety, making downtown a desirable destination for residents and visitors alike.
ese results ow directly from aligned public and private sector leadership, a cohesive vision and strategy, and energized downtown leadership. e downtown business community, residents, elected ocials and regional partners are aligned around the goal of establishing Cleveland as an 18-hour, 15-minute city.
Reimagining Downtown provides a clear blueprint for developers, investors and public o cials. Downtown Cleveland Inc. is delivering high quality services and compelling experiences, led by a team of downtown ambassadors who work 7 a.m.-midnight, seven days a week to help make downtown cleaner, safer and more attractive.
Improving the connectivity and quality of downtown public spaces is essential to attracting people, jobs and investment to the city’s core. Downtown Cleveland Inc.
has secured $850,000 in capital funding for Public Square improvements. ese funds are courtesy of the state of Ohio and the Project for Public Spaces.
While Public Square is a focal point, it is only the beginning of our work to ensure a world-class environment for residents, commuters and visitors. We are partnering with LAND Studio, a renowned design collective rm specializing in public art installations, cultural programming and civic space development, to implement our Downtown Retail Strategy, developing commercial corridors infused with light, color, sound, waynding and active storefronts that encourage people to spend more time — and money — downtown. Downtown Cleveland has achieved great success in just over a year of implementing Reimagining Downtown. Our downtown ranks rst in Ohio and second in the Great Lakes region in downtown recovery. Deep challenges, however, remain.
By focusing our resources and energy on safety, placemaking and walkable development, we will ensure that downtown Cleveland continues to be seen as a model for urban revitalization.
Taxes, education play big roles in population trends
Can policy reverse a long-run, negative population trend?
In Michigan, they have been studying it. More than seven months ago, the bipartisan Growing Michigan Together Council, tasked by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with developing recommendations to support population growth, issued its nal report. at report o ers a sobering picture of Michigan’s decline in both population and prosperity relative to other states.
Mike Addonizio is professor emeritus of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education at Wayne State University.
Michigan is 49th among states in population growth since 1990. Further, the population has gotten older as young people, especially those with college degrees, are either leaving the state or choosing not to come, favoring states with more opportunities.
is trend has serious economic and political consequences.
Whereas the median income of Michigan households was 18% above the national average in 1970, it had fallen to 9% below that benchmark by 2020. And the decline in relative population has reduced the state’s political in uence, with fewer congressional House members and fewer electoral votes.
e report prescribes a business development strategy centered around a highly skilled workforce and good public infrastructure. As an economist and longtime par-
ticipant and observer of education policy, I’ll focus on educational initiatives and assess the e orts and potential for implementing them.
e report proposes establishing the Michigan Education Guarantee, to give all Michigan high school graduates two years of publicly funded postsecondary education, either at a community college or a four-year university. Combined with a year of publicly funded preschool for all, this proposal would move the state from a K-12 education system to a pre-K-14.
To realize schools’ potential as engines of growth, the council placed particular emphasis on elementary and secondary public school teachers.
e report calls for “new designs for schooling, which may include structuring the school day to give teachers opportunities to work together, learn to improve their own practice and consider how to best organize teaching and learning across their school.”
To make this happen, schools will need adequate sta ng, with manageable class sizes and teaching loads. While e orts to rebuild the educator workforce have progressed over the past few years, including new funding for teacher scholarships and “grow your own” programs for support sta and students to become teachers, more resources are needed.
To nance opportunities for change, Michigan policymakers must change the state’s long-term tax-cutting trend. Michigan’s taxation levels have steadily fallen. As documented by Michigan State University economists Ron Fisher and Charles Ballard, among others, Michigan’s e ective tax rate —all state and local taxes as a percentage of total income — has generally been falling for 40 years and is now well below the national average, ranking 31st in per capita taxes and 33rd in e ective rate. at steady tax-cutting has had an e ect. e long-term decline in support for infrastructure and public schools has made our state smaller, older and less prosperous. Michigan has room to grow. It can increase support for schools, infrastructure and other public services people want without raising taxes to burdensome levels. Massachusetts and Michigan embarked on dramatic education and school nance reforms almost simultaneously in the early 1990s. At that time, their situations were not dissimilar. Financial support for public schools was roughly equal on average and while Massachusetts outperformed Michigan on some testing metrics, the di erences were not glaring. Since then, things have changed. While the Bay State is now widely regarded as among the nest public school systems in the U.S., Michigan is among the worst, ranking dead last among the states in student pro ciency gains and school funding growth, according to high-quality studies
by Michigan State University and the Brookings Institution.
For more than a quarter century now, political leaders in Massachusetts and Michigan have been making starkly di erent choices about education and tax reform. For example, between 1995 and 2015, Michigan’s in ation-adjusted K-12 revenue fell by 18%, putting it dead last among the states, while Massachusetts increased its real K-12 support by 26%.
Michigan has made some recent progress in supporting schools, but the budget just passed for FY 2025 is austere, with no increase in the schools’ basic allowance.
In sharp contrast, Bay State leaders recently nalized a state budget that will allow every resident to attend a Massachusetts community college tuition-free. How could they a ord this?
O cials point to their new voter-approved surtax on annual income exceeding $1 million and from taxes on capital gains. Michigan leaders say they want to be a top 10 state for population growth, with an excellent PK-14 school system and a world-class infrastructure. e current de cits have been decades in the making and will not be closed anytime soon. But real progress is possible. e particulars of another state’s success may not t exactly, but the bold vision of a dynamic state like Massachusetts can work. When it comes to schools, roads, mass transit and other public services people want, you get what you pay for.
Three ways Cleveland can attract more people
By Stacy Sominski
When it comes to increasing the number of people who call Northeast Ohio home, some key factors come up again and again from those who make a career out of researching ideas, gathering data, implementing plans and talking with people who come to the region:
Get people to visit Cleveland, and they are likely to shake any preconceived notions and old stereotypes. Make the area a place for residents to brag about and feel pride in, and others will listen. And give those messages time to make a di erence.
Does that sound pretty basic? It is. Or does it seem especially complicated? It is that, too.
Entice people to visit
e easier part: Give people reasons to come to the greater Cleveland area and to like what they nd. at’s easier because it’s happening. At Destination Cleveland, an agency that markets the city to visitors — both short- and long-term ones — research into why people visit the city and what they think when they do has revealed some steady patterns. And those signs are overwhelmingly positive.
“What we see now is how incredibly important perception is to getting people to visit,” said David Gilbert, president and CEO of Destination Cleveland. “And how visiting and changing perceptions is incredibly important to just get people to be open to the message of living and working in Cleveland … .”
And once people come to Cleveland, he said, it’s easier to get them to come back — maybe even permanently. It’s akin to turning a rst date into a lasting relationship.
“It used to be, ‘hey, you like Cleveland, come back for another visit,’ ” he said. “Now, it’s ‘you’ve experienced Cleveland and you like it, did you ever think of moving here? Here’s why.’ ”
Improve quality of life
The harder part is to make sure current residents have reasons to say nice things about their city. Improving the quality of life — reliable public transportation,
affordable child care and education options, safe neighborhoods — for those who already call the area home can be a key way to improve the health of the region. And making the area as healthy as possible can be a good way to catch the attention of people on the move.
Joanna Ganning, an associate professor of economic development in the Levin School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and the associate dean for faculty affairs, said that cities in what has been called the Rust Belt are, too often, too focused on getting new people without making sure those already there are living in a place where their daily needs are met.
“Make this place better for Clevelanders … make this a place that we love calling home. Fix the sidewalks. Keep the neighborhood school open,” she said. “Do those things and maybe then that investment, maybe someday, will attract other people. And if it does, great! But that’s the wrong goal for right this minute.”
Downtown Cleveland, an organization that concentrates its efforts to attract talent, jobs, residents and investment to the downtown area specifically, believes those sorts of improvements are on the upswing.
Michael Deemer, president and CEO of the organization, said there are improvements that visitors and residents both would agree are important.
“That is what we are focused on and what we’re working with all of our partners, most importantly the city and the county,” he said. “Because that really cuts across all areas and makes for a great environment that attracts people, talent and jobs.”
Because whether you are in the city for the day or for a lifetime, you want Cleveland at its best.
“I think where everything overlaps is the quality of the pedestrian experience, the vibrancy of the streets, sidewalks, parks and public spaces,” Deemer said. “Those are things that resonate and matter to the residents who live downtown, the commuters who come here every day, the visitors who come from afar and the visitors who come from the region to go to ball games, theater, concerts and the like.”
POPULATION
From Page 8
“We’re behind on pay scales,” Erhardt said. “We’re a little more a ordable, but we don’t pay as much. Except maybe Columbus, which is the fastest-growing city in Ohio.”
Turning policies into people
Bureaucrats can’t change the weather, but they can make policy adjustments to attract migrants from within the U.S. — international immigration is at the hands of the federal government.
Give it time — and listen to the experts
Part of bridging the distance between the fun stu of tourist attractions, big events and high-pro le activities and the more complicated work of improving the daily lives of people who live there is listening to those who collect data and study what works — and then having the political will to put it in action.
Gilbert said that a collaboration of organizations that joined forces to increase that pool of knowledge, the Cleveland Talent Alliance, is focusing on strategies to attract people to Cleveland.
Each member organization is using its expertise as the Talent Alliance targets three primary groups: people who have visited Cleveland, because Destination Cleveland’s research show they’re likely to have a positive impression; temporary residents such as college students and interns, who have come to enjoy life in the city; and expats, whose history is likely to give them a ection for the city and who will especially appreciate the improvements.
From there, it will take leadership to implement policies, programs and incentives that are for the greater good for residents and, it is hoped, visitors, too.
“Cities and downtowns thrive on bringing people together and having the energy and vibrancy that comes from that activity,” Deemer said. “… after a very challenging few years, we’re very much getting back to that level of energy and that sense of momentum and optimism. … that’s only been augmented by a real generational change in leadership, at the city, at the county, in Congress, within our institutions of higher learning, our civic infrastructure.
“I think that’s changed the identity of downtown and, by extension, the city and the region. It’s a place that people want to be in and people are coming back to.”
e most important way to achieve that, Ganning said, is to hear what the city’s residents are saying they need and to create change from within — even if it takes time to get there.
“Having the courage to listen to a community and to lead a community and to have a vision for the future that doesn’t look like the past is terrifying,” she said. “And necessary.”
taking proposals for state funding on ideas on boosting out of state migration. e $500,000 in funds is available to local governments, nonpro ts, economic development organizations and others. “ e idea is to study what programs work and which don’t,” Doe said. “We have a diverse state and the challenges are di erent, so we want to see di erent programs and how they will work.”
Michigan’s famed Pure Michigan campaign is also now under Doe’s o ce.
But have any policies really worked? at depends.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, started its Tulsa Remote program in 2018, ahead of the pandemic, o ering $10,000 to any remote workers who would move to Tulsa for at least one year. It worked.
More than 2,000 people relocated to Tulsa as of December 2022, according to the city’s economic report of the program. e result was nearly $307 million in additional labor income in the region. And the program had a multiplier e ect — for every two Tulsa Remote workers, three more were brought in either as children or workers to support their work. Of those in the program, 76% remained in Tulsa at the end of 2022.
“We’ve done the research. We have an old and cold problem,” Doe said. “People still perceive us as having legacy manufacturing and boring cities. But Michigan looks very di erent now, a lot of work has been done. Marketing is all about iteration and being agile to make campaigns better and better. We are now targeting better. Our top states are Texas, Illinois and New York.”
“People still perceive us as having legacy manufacturing and boring cities.”
Hilary Doe, chief growth of cer for Michigan
e cheaper cost of living in Oklahoma — the second most affordable state in the nation — allowed those in the Tulsa Remote program to increase their wages by $26,500 a year, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.
ere are roughly a dozen similar programs across the U.S., including in Topeka, Kansas; Rochester, New York; and more.
But Doe said the results of these programs are mixed and the outsized success of Tulsa’s program is due to its wraparound services.
e city o ers those remote workers a coworking space for 36 months and housing assistance.
“ ey have done a great job threading the needle,” Doe said. “I attribute their success to their community and the wraparound services they used to make the move compelling.”
Alabama targeted workers for its more rural areas in its Muscle Shoals region. Baltimore o ers $5,000 on a down payment for a house for those that move there.
But Doe said a truly successful program to attract new people into the state requires many approaches all working in concert. She is leading an approach that includes policy, programs and promotion.
e rst program under Doe launched in late July. e Make MI Home program is currently
e state launched the “You Can in Michigan” campaign in October last year to success, Doe said. e campaign markets tourism opportunities to out-of-state viewers with the express goal of moving those viewers into a website to eventually lead them to a jobs portal. Over the rst months, 10,000 people signed up in the jobs portal, with residents of Texas being the largest contingent. Doe said the results of the Make MI Home program will eventually dictate a larger statewide talent attraction policy. Ohio, on the other hand, is taking a larger swing. In February, the state launched the All Ohio Future Fund, a $750 million program for local communities to attract new businesses and prepare sites. Ohio’s program is focused on the traditional “build it and they will come” approach, opposed to Michigan, which is looking at a more varied base-hits strategy to get talent.
“ ese funds are critical to bringing more economic development to regions across Ohio,” said state Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Republican from Delaware, Ohio, when the program was announced. “When companies are choosing to do business in the Buckeye State, they are creating more jobs and more opportunities for Ohioans, their families, and generations to come.” Whether Michigan and Ohio can alter the overall population trends in their respective states remains uncertain. But they are both trying because it’s critical for their future.
“We have to make sure we’re getting national exposure and doing perception-shifting work,” Doe said. “I can’t stand that people don’t know how beautiful we are. We make sense for our water and how much we’re investing in clean energy, but we also make sense on paper. People just need to know that.”
Dustin Walsh is a senior reporter at Crain’s Detroit Business.
The modern workplace is evolving faster than ever, as employers across all industries adapt to new technologies, the resilience of remote work, workers' desire for greater work-life balance and the intricacies of a still-tight labor market. This list is a re ection and acknowledgment of the Ohio companies and organizations that are getting it right.
Determining the Best Employers in Ohio involved a two-step process. The rst consisted of evaluating each company’s workplace policies, practices and demographics. This part of the process was worth approximately 20% of the total evaluation. The second consisted of employee surveys to assess their experiences and attitudes. This part was worth approximately 80% of the total evaluation. Workforce Research Group managed the survey process and analyzed the data, using its expertise to determine the nal ranking.
Small/Medium Employers (15-249 U.S. employees)
1. MorelandConnect
◗ Industry: Software
◗ Location: Twinsburg
◗ Year founded: 2014
◗ Total U.S. employees: 22
◗ Total Ohio employees: 22
◗ Voluntary turnover: 0%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Mentorship and skills workshops
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Ongoing volunteer opportunities
MorelandConnect bills itself as a premier workplace with a focus on innovation, collaboration and employee well-being. This culture of creativity is bolstered by mentorship, skills workshops and access to the latest innovations. Additionally, Moreland prioritizes work-life balance through unlimited PTO, while employees can use on-site tness equipment during down time. Social responsibility is a company watchword as well, as Moreland encourages its team members to take on leadership roles within the community.
2. Payne & Tompkins Design-Renovations
◗ Industry: Residential remodeling
◗ Location: Chardon
◗ Year founded: 2018
◗ Total U.S. employees: 44
◗ Total Ohio employees: 44
◗ Voluntary turnover: 6%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Company vehicles and credit cards are offered to some team members.
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Donation drives and charitable matches
Payne & Tompkins prides itself on maintaining a rich culture that champions the individual. A core set of principles urges employees to value their position along with the company’s ongoing success. Bene ts and perks are designed to motivate team members, and interns and younger employees empowered to ask questions and contribute fresh ideas. Work-life balance is a priority at Payne & Tompkins, exempli ed by exible scheduling around family and community activities.
MorelandConnect
Payne & Tompkins Design-Renovations
This
Proud to be one of Crain’s Cleveland Business’s Best Employers in Ohio.
3. InfoTrust
◗ Industry: Marketing
◗ Location: Blue Ash
◗ Year founded: 2010
◗ Total U.S. employees: 116
◗ Total Ohio employees: 60
◗ Voluntary turnover: N/A
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Fully paid medical, dental and vision insurance, as well as 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Team members participate in local health and human services initiatives.
InfoTrust is a digital technology, analytics consulting and data governance rm with a broad range of Google Partner certi cations. The fast-growing global company offers a selection of bene ts to employees, including an open PTO policy, exible work schedule, tuition reimbursement and a 401(k) program with a company match. On the diversity, equity and inclusion front, InfoTrust optimizes gender-neutral job descriptions, using online resources to identify male- and female-coded language. Additionally, the organization advertises positions on HBCU Connect, a website for historically Black colleges and universities.
4. HD Growth Partners
◗ Industry: Accounting
◗ Location: Youngstown
◗ Year founded: 2007
◗ Total U.S. employees: 64
◗ Total Ohio employees: 64
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: COVID-era care packages for associates working from home that included snacks and houseplants
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Matching donations, food drives and local health and human services volunteering
Culture is a foundational tenet of every decision made at Evarts Tremaine — a strong, positive environment is crucial to a workplace where innovation thrives. Bene ts at Evarts include prepaid legal services, identity fraud coverage, pet insurance and an employee mental health hotline. Fostering a sense of work-life balance respects and adapts to team members’ varied needs and lifestyles. The company also seeks associates from disparate backgrounds and work experiences. One current employee graduated with dual majors in neuroscience and audiovisual technology.
6. Channel Products
◗ Industry: Electronics manufacturing
◗ Location: Solon
◗ Year founded: 1972
◗ Total U.S. employees: 19
◗ Total Ohio employees: 19
◗ Voluntary turnover: 5%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: A work-from-home schedule on Thursday and Friday each week
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Ongoing volunteer opportunities
For 14 consecutive years, Civista Bank has proudly been named one of the Best Employers in Ohio. Our exceptional team, dedicated to serving and uplifting our communities over the past 140 years, makes this achievement possible.
◗ Voluntary turnover: 11%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: An annual $500 “healthy lifestyle reimbursement” for tness trackers and home gym equipment.
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable donation matches, food drives and participation in local health and human services initiatives
7. Fairport Wealth
◗ Industry: Finance
◗ Location: Cleveland
◗ Year founded: 1963
◗ Total U.S. employees: 63
◗ Total Ohio employees: 37
◗ Voluntary turnover: 5%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Adoption services and paid time off and legal fees
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable matching, donation drives and local health and human services volunteering
8. WellnessIQ
As we continue to grow, we remain committed to evolving and meeting the diverse needs of our communities, enhancing the financial well-being of our customers and team members. Ready to join our award-winning bank? See career opportunities at civista.bank/life-at-civista.
HD Growth Partners has been recognized by Crain’s Cleveland Business as a top area employer for multiple years. The company, also named a “Best Firm To Work For” by Accounting Today, has built an environment around employee wellness and satisfaction. Team members enjoy a exible “work anytime, work anywhere” schedule, along with a bene ts package consisting of full health care coverage and a 401(k) match. Other advantages include an annual Sam’s Club membership and $200 in company-branded clothing.
5. Evarts Tremaine
◗ Industry: Insurance
◗ Location: Cleveland
◗ Year founded: 1844
◗ Total U.S. employees: 20
◗ Total Ohio employees: 20
◗ Voluntary turnover: 10%
◗ Industry: Health care
◗ Location: Independence
◗ Year founded: 2007
◗ Total U.S. employees: 28
◗ Total Ohio employees: 28
◗ Voluntary turnover: 10%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Flexible work hours outside of core company hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities and donation drives
WestPoint Financial Group offers a caring community to employees and clients alike, with a culture that emphasizes both individual and team success. A strong emphasis is placed on workplace culture and fun, as well as an open atmosphere where any problem or suggestion receives a timely response. Remote working is a company staple, via technology supported by in-house IT specialists. WestPoint also includes members through Zoom meetings and presentations, ensuring an ongoing connection with daily company activities.
4. The Kendall Group
◗ Industry: Supply
◗ Location: Dayton
◗ Year founded: 1973
◗ Total U.S. employees: 1,640
◗ Total Ohio employees: 158
◗ Voluntary turnover: 5%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Eight hours of PTO for volunteer opportunities
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities, charitable matches and donation drives
The Kendall Group is a fully employee-owned business committed to bringing value to both its customers and owner-associates. Kendall actively recruits marginalized populations, with a particular emphasis on women, veterans and minority groups. Gen Z employees are a focus as well, due to an internship program that proactively sources candidates from local college and university career fairs. As an employee-owned company, Kendall strives to provide the best bene ts at the lowest cost. This package encompasses dependent care exible-spending accounts and a recently added pet insurance policy.
5. Galen College of Nursing
◗ Industry: Health care
◗ Location: Cincinnati
◗ Year founded: 1989
◗ Total U.S. employees: 2,209
◗ Total Ohio employees: 93
◗ Voluntary turnover: 10%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Wellness incentives for gym memberships and other preventive health measures
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities, donation drives, charitable matches and engagement in local health and human services initiatives
Galen College of Nursing expands access to quality health care education through a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. Academic and student support systems are bolstered by weekly town hall meetings that provide clarity around the college’s strategic efforts. Inclusivity and
respect are central to Galen’s mission as well, thanks to programming that meets the needs of a diverse student population. Along with educational efforts from the institution’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, Galen posts openings on the diversitynursing.com website to attract the widest range of applicants.
6. HBK CPAs & Consultants
◗ Industry: Accounting
◗ Location: Can eld
◗ Year founded: 1949
◗ Total U.S. employees: 747
◗ Total Ohio employees: 132
◗ Voluntary turnover: 25%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Partially paid maternity and paternity leave
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities and donation drives
7. American Structurepoint Inc.
◗ Industry: Design
◗ Location: Columbus
◗ Year founded: 1966
◗ Total U.S. employees: 620
◗ Total Ohio employees: 126
◗ Voluntary turnover: 1%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Flextime scheduling, vacation bonus and employee discounts
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable matches and ongoing volunteer opportunities
8. Marsh McLennan Agency
◗ Industry: Insurance
◗ Location: Dayton
◗ Year founded: 1935
◗ Total U.S. employees: 962
◗ Total Ohio employees: 180
◗ Voluntary turnover: 9%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Flexible spending accounts, pet insurance and free virtual yoga classes
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities and charitable matches
9. First Merchants Bank
◗ Industry: Banking
◗ Location: Columbus
◗ Year founded: 1893
◗ Total U.S. employees: 2,213
◗ Total Ohio employees: 130
◗ Voluntary turnover: N/A
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Provides nancial support to community causes like affordable housing, neighborhood redevelopment and workforce training
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities and engagement in local health and human services initiatives
10. Park Place Technologies
◗ Industry: Technology
◗ Location: May eld Heights
◗ Year founded: 1991
◗ Total U.S. employees: 1,411
◗ Total Ohio employees: 620
◗ Voluntary turnover: 12%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: A $100 monthly contribution toward employee student loans
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable matches and donation drives
11. Blue & Co.
◗ Industry: Accounting
◗ Location: Westerville
◗ Year founded: 1970
◗ Total U.S. employees: 485
◗ Total Ohio employees: 94
◗ Voluntary turnover: 12%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Employees save with interest-free loans on tablets and computers
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable matches, donation drives and local health and human services volunteering
12. Nutrien
◗ Industry: Agriculture
◗ Location: Lima
◗ Year founded: 2018
◗ Total U.S. employees: 14,069
◗ Total Ohio employees: 190
◗ Voluntary turnover: 2%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: Donation matching program up to $5,000 per employee per year and paid volunteer time outside of work hours, with funds that can be donated to eligible charities
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Volunteer opportunities, charitable matches and donation drives
13. Civista Bank
◗ Industry: Banking
◗ Location: Sandusky
◗ Year founded: 1884
◗ Total U.S. employees: 547
◗ Total Ohio employees: 431
◗ Voluntary turnover: 18%
◗ Unique bene ts offered to employees: A gift card program
◗ How the organization gives back to the community: Charitable matches and local health and human services volunteering
American Structurepoint Inc.
LARGEST HOSPITALS IN NORTHEAST OHIO CRAIN’S LIST
Notre Dame College transfers boost Walsh enrollment
By Joe Scalzo
Soon after Notre Dame College (NDC) announced plans to close at the end of the spring semester, a delegation from Walsh University loaded a group of more than 60 potential NDC transfers into a bus and drove an hour south to the North Canton campus for an afternoon.
“I think that really helped, that we weren’t just here to say, ‘Yeah, come visit anytime,’” said Rebecca Coneglio, Walsh’s vice president for enrollment management. “It was more, ‘Hey, we’ll come up, we’ll pick you up, we’ll bring you down for the day and we’ll drive you down to the campus.’ I think that really gave them a sense that this could be their new home.”
Walsh’s latest enrollment gures bear that out. e Catholic liberal arts school announced on Monday, Aug. 12, that 103 NDC students have transferred to Walsh, including 85 traditional undergraduates and 18 adult and graduate students.
Overall, Walsh expects to welcome 508 new traditional undergraduate students — its largest class since 2014 — and a schoolrecord 128 undergraduate transfers for its rst day of classes on Monday, Aug. 19.
“We’re excited,” Coneglio said. “We were projecting to meet enroll-
ment goals before the NDC closure and we were looking at having a good-sized freshman class and meeting our transfer enrollment goals prior to the NDC news. So, it was overall a good year for us.”
Walsh made early inroads with NDC’s students, o ering guaran-
teed admission and matchingnancial aid to transfer students. Walsh representatives also visited NDC’s campus at least once a week between the rst transfer fair in March and the school’s nal class in May. at approach paid o almost immediately, with Walsh announcing on April 2 that it was adding NDC’s men’s and women’s rugby teams, despite the fact that the Division II Cavaliers had never o ered the sport. Ultimately, 55 NDC rugby players transferred to Walsh, Coneglio said.
The Catholic liberal arts school announced that 103 NDC students have transferred to Walsh, including 85 traditional undergraduates and 18 adult and graduate students.
“ e additional NDC students came to us for di erent programs — some athletes, some nonathletes, some for particular academic programs like education or nursing and we were able to accommodate that both academically and nancially,” Coneglio said.
“It was de nitely a di cult situation for those students and their families, and we felt that, especially at the transfer fair in March. But the more we worked with the families and once we got to the end of May and early June, we started to see a shift in emotion. ey became much more excited about the new opportunity and I was really excited to see that — that they were shifting in how they perceived their next adventure here on our campus.”
The Paul & Carol David Family Campus Center at Walsh University in North Canton WALSH UNIVERSITY
foot easier.
City-lake microconnections planned at West ird and West Sixth streets, currently dotted with surface parking and low bridges, will have lake access, opening up an array of development options.
“We fall into the trap of treating everything on the downtown side of the Shoreway as if it’s a million miles away from the stadium,” Deemer said. “The beauty of the plan the city unveiled is that it opens up a universe of opportunities to create a vibrant neighborhood around the stadium.”
ere are plenty of options for the Haslams to come in and develop the area around the stadium on the same level seen in the Brook Park plan, Deemer said.
who have tailgated year in and year out, no matter the season’s record,” Ronayne added. “We want to hear the case for support from our bar owners, our restaurant owners, our hotel owners. We want you to join us to make the plea for why history matters.”
e county executive quashed concerns that he would use the public funds to help the team move out of the city and in the process asked the Browns’ owners to release renderings for the proposed $1 billion in renovations to the current stadium.
“It may not be one big, uni ed site, the way that is in Brook Park,” Deemer added. “But there are ample development opportunities in the core that could really create a seamless urban fabric to the stadium.”
Clevelanders, he added, have some “well-earned cynicism about waterfront development.”
e message is the latest in a public volley between city, county o cials and Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam that began with Bibb’s letter outlining a $461 million plan fornancing Cleveland Stadium repairs, improvements which included an Aug. 12 decision deadline. ( e deadline passed with no decision made.)
e city’s opening salvo was followed by a letter from the HSG’s Dave Jenkins inviting fans to watch a video depicting plans for a $2.4 billion domed stadium surrounded by a complex of hotels, retail and ample parking. at plan, according to the Haslams, is proposed to go
“The beauty of the plan the city unveiled is that it opens up a universe of opportunities to create a vibrant neighborhood around the stadium.”
Michael Deemer, president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Inc.
But as preliminary design work is underway using in-hand state capital funds, Deemer said, this time “it’s really happening.” Ronayne’s plea is personal. Echoing Jones, he said spoke directly to the team and owners.
“We’ve never seen I’ve never seen someone not take their seat because parking was a problem. I’ve never seen someone not take their seat even in snow and rain,” Ronayne said. “You belong in downtown Cleveland, where this stadium has been for nearly 100 years, and where it has been for every Browns home game for the last 80 years. ... (Stay) and be a part of the buildout that’s happened here.”
Ronayne wants to hear from fans
On Monday, Aug. 12, Ronayne followed up on an Aug. 11 letter — co-signed by County Council President Pernel Jones Jr. — by telling a press conference that it’s time for the fans to weigh in, Ronayne said.
“We need to make the case collectively to the Haslam Sports Group (HSG) and we want to hear from the fans,” Ronayne said at a press conference that day with Jones.
“We want to hear from those
DATA
From Page 1
the company’s Energy Solutions and Services operations.
“Both are growing in exciting ways, and it’s exciting to be at this intersection where they all come together,” she said.
e power and data-center end markets, as well as the related market of renewable energy, are growing at double-digit rates in terms of Eaton’s revenues, McMillin said.
For data centers, which include the big Amazon centers in Ohio and other states, as well as crypto miners, and traditional places like banks and insurance companies, it’s important to have reliable power, even during outages, she said.
on a 176-acre parcel in the city of Brook Park.
After questions arose about a plan for the county to contribute to the Brook Park plan, Ronayne and Jones on Sunday, Aug. 11, countered with a public letter of their own.
eir message at the press conference was that the Brook Park nancial ask — $600 million in grants and bonds and a 1% increase in the county bed tax — “does not make scal sense for Cuyahoga County residents and taxpayers.”
e remainder of the $1.2 billion public portion of the public-private partnerships proposed by HSG could come from the state, as well as bonds paid for by tax revenue generated from tickets, parking and sales surrounding the stadium.
Just shy of the decision deadline, the only thing the Haslams, Bibb and Ronayne have agreed on is the commitment to keep talking.
“We all have a role to play,” Ronayne said. “ e mayor of Cleveland, Justin Bibb, is in negotiations now. e city of Cleveland has put out their thoughts. e Browns are reviewing it and asking additional questions. We are not in direct negotiation. We are only here to share our thoughts.”
In addition, many data centers need the ability to switch their power on and o to take advantage of times when electric rates are cheap and to avoid times of peak loads when rates are high. Some also need to be able to turn on their renewable power when it’s available and switch back to traditional sources of power, such as natural gas-generated electricity, when renewables can’t meet their demand.
For such customers, Eaton o ers products like uninterruptible power supplies and battery packs, as well as digital power-management solutions, that enable them to coordinate their loads. at includes helping data centers develop and manage their own microgrids for power, and installing and using battery systems that store renewable energy when more is being produced than used.
Data centers typically want to burn the cleanest power they can get, including from their own solar and other renewable installations, McMillin said. And, perhaps more than anyone, they want the grid to be safe and reliable.
“You’ve got the growth they’re trying to manage and the sustainability is important to them, and grid sustainability is very important to them,” McMillin said.
It’s a huge business for Eaton. e company posted 2023 revenue of $23.2 billion, and 14% of it, or a little more than $3.2 billion, came from the data center and related IT markets, said Margaret Hagan, Eaton’s
senior communications manager. at revenue line is expected to grow at an annual rate of about 25%, which prompted the company to adjust its revenue projections upward this year, she added.
Little wonder the company announced in early 2023 that it was investing $500 million in North America to support electri cation, energy transition and digitalization, followed by the September opening of its Montreal Innovation Center, focused on digital technologies for distributed energy resources.
On the transmission and utility side of the plugs, which makes up about 11% of Eaton’s revenue and is growing at an annual rate of 11%, the company provides a slew of products, such as voltage regulators and transformers, as well as digitally enabled hardware and software for grid planning and automation.
ere’s a lot of work to be done on the nation’s electric system, which is overdue for improvements in an era where more things require juice. Eaton’s excited that the nation is nally starting to invest in its electric grid after decades of taking it for advantage, McMillin said.
“In the U.S., the grid was there and we took it for granted,” she said. “But at some point you have to get it current and you have to get it up to date for the needs of the day, so there’s a lot of investment now and I think it’s fantastic.”
Lubrizol’s liquid approach
At Lubrizol, the focus is on the other end of the plug. e Wickli e-based company is hoping its new technology will enable data centers to run cooler, producing less noise and heat, while also using less power.
e solution Lubrizol is o ering is di erent than the way big computer centers run their servers today. Lubrizol proposes that those servers be immersed and run in a liquid environment that is more effective at cooling chips and circuits than the air in which servers operate.
e company has developed a system using a special dielectric solution called CompuZol, into which it says regular computer circuitry can be immersed and run
cooler, without the need of fans that gobble up more power and produce heat and noise.
“CompuZol is very e ective at, basically, removing heat from servers and data centers,” Lubrizol CEO Rebecca Liebert said in a recent interview. “And it’s much more e ective than air-cooled servers because air is a very poor conductor.” It’s a new, but not unheard-of, concept. In 2022 Lubrizol teamed up with Park Place Technologies, a data center and network development rm, to develop the technology as a way to increase computing densities.
“It’s still a nascent concept across the industry, but one we’ve spent a lot of time and e ort developing,” said Mark Rees, Lubrizol’s corporate vice president for technology and innovation.
Lubrizol has about a half-dozen servers running in the uid in its own data center, Rees said, and a larger test tank where it can immerse and run 30 to 40 servers at once.
CompuZol has shown it can remove heat 10% better than competing uids, he said, and about 40% better than air.
“We’re very excited about this. We see this as a technology that brings a lot of bene ts in terms of energy consumption,” Rees said. “You can save up to about 30% or 40% on energy.”
Lubrizol is ready and able to sell CompuZol systems now, Rees said. But what it’s really hoping for is adoption by some large users and even computer manufacturers.
Because servers run in CompuZol won’t have fans, they can be designed di erently — smaller, and with chips and circuits more densely packaged because heat will be less of an issue.
“ e industry is wrestling with, ‘What is the speed of adoption?’ ... We’re still at the early adoption and proof-of-concept phase,” Rees said.
But as more and more data need to be handled and as people look for new ways to run data centers with lower costs and more reliability, Rees thinks the industry will turn to immersive cooling. “ is isn’t going to be a onedimensional move, it needs to have industry players working together,” Rees said.
Servers take a dip into Lubrizol’s CompuZol immersive liquid, where they’ll run cooler than they would in air, without fans. | LUBRIZOL
Deemer
CYBERSECURITY:
What You and Your Business Need to Know
Greg D. Nelsen SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE Cleveland FBI
Chris Prewitt CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER Inversion6
Kim Roy Wilson COMMISSIONER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY City of Cleveland
With Chips Act money mostly divvied up, the real test begins
By Mackenzie Hawkins. Bloomberg
e Biden administration is nearly nished divvying up $39 billion in grants under the Chips and Science Act, the landmark bipartisan legislation aimed at revitalizing the domestic semiconductor industry.
e bigger test still lies ahead.
e Chips Act, enacted two years ago Friday, Aug. 9, is the nation’s most audacious foray into industrial policy since World War II. It’s essentially a bet that four companies — Intel Corp., Micron Technology Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. — can bring sophisticated chip production back to the U.S. In a sign of the ambition, one explicit goal is making a fth of the world’s most advanced processors by 2030, up from roughly zero today.
e U.S. is in many ways on track, but it’s been no simple task.
Hundreds of rms spent months haggling over the money. Even U.S. o cials themselves have disagreed over which parts of the chip economy need the most help. ey opted to give the biggest preliminary award to Intel — which Commerce
Secretary Gina Raimondo has called “an American champion” — only to see the Silicon Valley pioneer disclose profound business problems earlier this month. It plans to slash more than 15,000 jobs as sales decline, and Intel’s stock is trading near its lowest level in more than a decade.
Yet Intel, while crucial, isn’t everything. e more fundamental question is whether the U.S. can sustain momentum across the broader undertaking. Industry leaders have always cautioned that $39 billion isn’t actually that much. Companies will need to nd more than 160,000 workers. And the country is heading toward a presidential election that only adds uncertainty.
At the center of it all is Mike Schmidt, who runs the Commerce Department’s 175-person Chips Program O ce, or CPO. His team — formed with talent from Washington, Wall Street and Silicon Valley — has one primary task: reducing reliance on Asia, and particularly Taiwan, for the tiny electronic components that power everything from microwaves to missiles.
Both American and foreign companies are now “investing at major
scale in semiconductor manufacturing in the United States,” he said in an interview, and that alone is a tremendous milestone. “If you could go back two years and tell us that we’d be where we are now, I would take it 100 times out of 100.”
A top priority is securing at least two large manufacturing clusters for leading-edge logic chips, or the brains of devices. O cials also want high-volume sites for advanced packaging, the process of encasing chips and connecting them to other hardware. And they’re seeking increased production of less advanced semiconductors known as legacy chips, an area where the U.S. worries about China’s growing capacity, as well as cutting-edge DRAM memory, which handles data storage and is essential to the AI boom.
On all fronts, there’s progress. In the past several years, nearly a hundred companies have pledged to spend roughly $400 billion on U.S. facilities. Over half of that comes from a trio of top chipmakers — TSMC, Intel and Samsung — that are planning a slew of new chip fabrication centers, or fabs, to manufacture their most cutting-edge technology.
But most of those semiconductors will pass through Asia. CPO couldn’t persuade TSMC to bring packaging capacity to its site in Arizona, according to people familiar with the conversations. And though a supplier is building nearby, many chips will be shipped overseas for a key step of the process. at’s true for much of the US semiconductor ecosystem — a dynamic that a senior Commerce o cial warned “creates supply chain and national security risks that we just can’t accept.” (TSMC and CPO declined to comment on their talks.)
Asked what share of U.S.-made
CRAIN'S DINING & ENTERTA INMENT GUIDE
chips could be packaged here based on current plans, Schmidt didn’t offer a speci c number. “ e supply chains will continue to be global,” he said, adding that the U.S. has made a “strong foothold.” CPO has funded ve packaging-related projects so far, one of which will focus on chips sent here from South Korea.
e Biden administration also has struggled with how to promote memory chips, a commoditized product that carries low pro t margins — meaning that scale matters for commercial viability. Samsung oated the idea of building a Texas
INVITE DECISION MAKERS TO YOUR TABLE.
Reserve your seat in Crain1 s Dining & Entertainment
• Fall: Sept. 23 (close Aug. 22)
CRAIN'S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
President Joe Biden and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger arrive for a ceremony at the groundbreaking of Intel’s new manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio, in September 2022. BLOOMBERG
memory fab, people familiar with the matter said, as part of a broader investment pitch that would have been more than double its current commitment. CPO decided against funding it. (Samsung and CPO declined to comment. Most of the dozens of people interviewed for this story requested anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.)
Instead, o cials rested their ambitions on Micron’s memory-chip projects in Idaho and upstate New York — a decision some attribute partly to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who once listed himself as one of ve reasons to invest in the Empire State. Micron is planning as many as four fabs in the Syracuse region over 20 years. But CPO was seeking projects that will start production by the end of the decade and only funded the rst two. at will “provide the foundation,” Schmidt said, to make ongoing investments attractive.
A full build-out is far from a sure thing. e Environmental Protection Agency is concerned that Micron’s proposed site “does not currently comply” with the Clean Water Act, according to a July 30 letter reviewed by Bloomberg. It notes a signi cant impact on wetlands and says Micron is working on — but hasn’t submitted — a comprehensive mitigation plan. e company is now slow-walking plans for its third New York fab, people with knowledge of the matter said, as it talks to Tokyo o cials about adding another facility in Japan.
“Micron is taking the rst steps toward our vision of a four-fab complex in New York,” the chipmaker said in a statement, and is committed to planned investments there and in Idaho. e New York site will “likely result in wetland impacts,” it said, adding that permitting applications are underway. en there’s Intel.
Pat Gelsinger, the struggling company’s CEO, has hitched his ambitious turnaround plans to money from the Chips Act — and already called for a “Chips II.” e crown jewel of the expansion is a sprawling Ohio complex that Intel has said will become the world’s largest chipmaking facility, and which President Joe Biden has called a “ eld of dreams.” Pulling it o was always going to be a challenge. ere isn’t much of a semiconductor ecosystem in the state,
and it’s not clear whether Intel has lined up any customers.
Even after announcing layo s and cutting the company’s longprized dividend, Gelsinger has said Intel remains dedicated to its manufacturing road map.
Schmidt, asked about Intel’s most recent earnings report, pointed to those remarks. And if there are setbacks, the Chips Act has a built-in insurance policy: Companies won’t receive money until they hit speci c construction and production benchmarks, and CPO can claw back already-disbursed funds if projects are never completed.
“Intel is prioritizing our core investments that are laying the groundwork for our future, and we are committed to our existing US projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon,” the chipmaker said in a statement.
But there’s more at stake if Intel can’t deliver. e company is also the sole intended bene ciary of a $3.5 billion Chips Act program to make advanced electronics for the military, an e ort called the Secure Enclave. e idea is to create a separate, locked-down area within Intel’s factories to make semiconductors for top-secret defense purposes. It’s caused a furor in Washington, in part because it entrusts the responsibility to one company.
But the real drama began on a ursday in February, when the Defense Department informed Commerce that it would no longer foot its $2.5 billion share of the Secure Enclave bill. Days later, lawmakers directed CPO to shoulder the full burden. CPO ultimately helped cover the shortfall by scrapping a program for commercial research and development, which meant it couldn’t fund a $4 billion Applied Materials Inc. project in the heart of Silicon Valley. (Ocials intend to revive that R&D initiative if they get more money from Congress, but attempts at a $3 billion boost have stalled.)
For many in government and industry, the episode felt like a prime example of Washington getting in its own way. ( e Pentagon, Commerce Department and Intel declined to comment.)
While most Chips Act promises are just that — promises — companies have also committed real money to groundbreakings across the country. e rst Chips Act-supported production could start by the end of this year, CPO said, without specifying which rm might reach that target.
Several major sites have seen at least a small delay, on top of project timelines that are already longer than they would be in many other parts of the world. Companies hoped for a reprieve from often-lengthy environmental reviews, but Republicans blocked that legislation. TSMC — which has long thrived at home, thanks in part to ample government help — spent months resolving a spat with local unions. Other rms’ woes have ranged from cement plants to endangered bats.
CPO is also contending with a labor provision called Davis-Bacon, which sets prevailing wages for federally supported construction. e Department of Labor
wants semiconductor companies to retroactively apply new wage oors for workers who started before projects won Chips Act awards, people familiar with the situation said. e chipmakers say compliance alone could cost millions and introduce signi cant liability, as they have to nd contractors who left sites months or years ago — to say nothing of the actual back pay. e issue has stalled several negotiations, according to the people, as CPO and companies work toward nal award agreements.
“ is is the rst time that Davis-Bacon has applied to the construction of semiconductor facilities, and we are working constructively both with our applicants and the Department of Labor to implement it in a new context,” a Commerce representative said.
e Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment.
e White House and many Democrats also want semiconductor subsidies to be a boon for unions, and labor leaders have made it clear they expect to benet. In some cases, they have: Eight chip construction sites, including Micron’s, are covered by labor agreements or have a heavily unionized workforce. e fabs themselves are a separate challenge. Intel met with the Communications Workers of America but declined to move forward with labor peace talks; Micron committed to a CWA dialogue, but the union said it’s been “disappointing” so far.
“All of us workers — we’re taxpayers,” said 36-year-old Robbie Garecht, who’s among dozens of employees demanding better pay and safety measures at an Analog Devices Inc. factory that’s vying for federal funds. “ at’s our money.” ( e company said it respects employees’ right to express their views and aims to address their feedback.)
Yet those hurdles haven’t caused any major chipmakers to eschew the subsidies altogether. Nor have requirements for things like childcare services at large factories — a minor theme in negotiations despite weeks of Washington hand-wringing — or CPO asking companies to launch apprenticeships, for which awards only stipulate a reasonable e ort, according to people familiar with the talks. e lion’s share of negotiating time goes to dollar amounts and milestones, Schmidt said: “I think we made actually tremendous progress in a pretty short period.”
To make it all worthwhile, the fabs need workers, from engineers who design chips to technicians who make them. Even under optimistic projections, the U.S. semiconductor industry will be short 59,000 engineers over the next ve years, according to McKinsey & Co., and possibly as many as 77,000. ere’s real concern that without immigration reform — and a cultural shift that draws more Americans into hardware innovation — the country could build a bunch of fabs, then struggle to maintain leadership. A pessimistic outlook for technicians similarly sees a 69,000-person gap. But it’s entirely possible to avert a long-term technician shortage,
McKinsey says, in part by transitioning people from similar industries. In places like Ohio, there’s a large labor pool with transferrable skills, a 2023 study found. A lack of such workers in Texas, meanwhile, presents a more acute challenge.
A lot hinges on training. Colleges have launched or expanded more than 80 semiconductor-related programs since the Chips Act passed, CPO says; the question is whether they can scale fast enough. In upstate New York, a partnership between Hudson Valley Community College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute o ers two years of instruction — and a GlobalFoundries Inc. internship — to an inaugural cohort of six students.
In Arizona and Oregon, meanwhile, Intel has hired 220 students from its Quick Start initiative, which provides two weeks of industry exposure. But the majority of around 900 Arizona graduates haven’t landed chip-related jobs, in part because new factories aren’t up and running. Intel hopes to hire more when its Fab 52 opens next year, the company said. In the meantime, the Greater Phoenix Economic Council has been working to connect those students to 64 other semiconductor-related employers in the region.
Looming in the background is November’s presidential election. CPO aims to allocate the remaining grant money — a few billion dollars — by the end of this year. Conservative Hill sta ers and think tankers, meanwhile, are plotting how they might rescind what they consider “woke” Chips Act rules if Donald Trump wins back the White House. at’s all while Trump, whose administration rst recruited TSMC in 2020, questions the wisdom of supporting Taiwanese rms’ investments. (He did not name TSMC.)
But the Chips Act has always been a bipartisan e ort. And in private, a few GOP lawmakers who voted against it have begrudgingly come on board, said Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican and an original architect of the bill. “Some are embarrassed,” he said, by how much it’s accomplished.
Asked whether political volatility could make it harder for the U.S. to achieve the legislation’s goals, Schmidt paused.
“Our success as a program has been built in large part on the strength of the relationships we built with our applicants,” he said. “ ose aren’t always easy relationships, but they are relationships where we’ve built a lot of trust.”
Greyhound Cleveland stop may move to RTA’s Brookpark Road station
By Stan Bullard
Greyhound bus riders may use a new terminal at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Brookpark Road rapid transit station if talks come to fruition.
GCRTA spokesman Robert Flieg con rmed that the agency is looking at making a site available on the rapid station’s parking lot for Greyhound and Barons Bus, a major service provider for the national bus operator, for a terminal to replace the landmark station downtown.
“Our Brookpark Station’s overow parking lot provides the space needed by Barons Bus to build a new transit center where customers can purchase tickets, board, disembark, and wait for their bus,” Flieg wrote in an emailed statement. “An agreement between Barons Bus and GCRTA is currently under review and being processed through normal procedures.”
e site is on the border of the city of Cleveland and suburban Brook Park, across from the Ford engine plant.
However, Flieg added that the agency is “actively pursuing” curbside stops downtown to provide service in the central city.
“Ensuring public transit access to downtown remains an important focus for the city of Cleveland and RTA,” Flieg wrote.
e Brookpark Road location, he added, would allow Greyhound and Barons Bus to meet passenger needs now as well as into the future. Constructing a terminal of some sort to replace the current station is a more ele-
gant solution than Greyhound has implemented at other legacy stations, which have been reused. Customer stops have been moved to outlying gas stations by highway interchanges.
e headquarters for Barons Bus, which also has a substantial bus charter business, is at 13315 Brookpark Road in Brook Park. Its headquarters and garage are two miles away from the proposed new terminal. Barons already provided a stop for Greyhound riders in Brook Park for some trips departing from the legacy bus line’s downtown terminal.
Flieg said he has no additional details about the plans as of Friday, Aug. 9.
A permanent home for the use of buses and riders has been in play since a predecessor of Greyhound’s current ownership separated the landmark terminal on Chester Avenue from the business.
e building was then sold to a rm focusing on disposing of corporate properties in bulk,
Last fall, there were talks of moving the terminal to GCRTA’s Puritas-West 150th stop.
e Playhouse Square Foundation bought the station earlier this year to extend its redevelopment e orts north from its current border on Chester. at’s where the foundation’s parking garage and access to its theaters and several of its buildings are located.
Neither Greyhound nor Barons could be reached by 11:30 a.m. Aug. 9.
e Plain Dealer and Cleveland. com initially reported the potential relocation of the operation to the RTA station.
Synthomer seeks co-tenant at Omnova’s former headquarters
Stan Bullard
In a move that may wrest a bonus from the hybrid workplace, Synthomer, the London-based specialty chemicals company, has retained the Cushman & Wake eld Cresco brokerage to seek a tenant for part of Omnova’s former Beachwood headquarters.
sublease, according to David Leb, a Cresco vice president handling the o ering.
“ is could allow Synthomer to reduce its operating costs,” Leb said in a phone interview.
He attributed the available space solely to the number of Synthomer sta ers choosing to work at home because they can ful ll their duties from home.
“We feel there’s an opportunity here because the amount of Class A of ce market is declining in Beachwood.”
David Leb, a Cresco vice president handling the offering
Synthomer, the owner of the former Omnova Solutions Inc. since 2020, consolidated the Omnova sta on the building’s second oor to improve communications and work culture. at’s opened the door for a potential
e move adds to the market the rst oor of the two-story corporate headquarters that Omnova completed in 2016 with the aid of nancing through the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. It was in the building for four years before the public company was bought by Synthomer.
e rst oor of the building has 30,000 square feet of space, which includes the opportunity
for tenants to use the building’s tness center and cafeteria.
“In the end, about 15,000 square feet of o ce space is available, and it’s fully furnished,” Leb said.
An architect will be retained to decide how to divide the building for two tenants, but much of that depends on adapting building security and entrances, Leb said.
“We feel there’s an opportunity here because the amount of Class A o ce market is declining in Beachwood,” Leb said. “It has a lot of windows and high ceilings.” Under port nancing terms, a company leases the built-to-suit property for 99 years and may then buy it. at is what makes this o ering technically a sublease.
e building has a total of about 60,000 square feet of o ce space and is at 25435 Harvard Road in the Chagrin Highlands corporate o ce and medical park.
Greater Cleveland Food Bank shells out $3.5M for West Side site
By Stan Bullard
A former supermarket that has served as o ce space for years may return to its food roots, following its purchase by the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.
e food bank on ursday, Aug. 8, paid $3.5 million for the Cleveland building on the northwest corner of West 98th Street and Lorain Avenue, according to Cuyahoga County land records.
e county assigned the building a $2.8 million market value for property tax purposes.
Kristin Warzocha, food bank president and CEO, said in a phone interview the property will be renovated as a community resource center where people who qualify may shop in a market-style format and serve as a location for social service partners who may help clients deal with factors that create food insecurity.
“ is allows people to select the healthy food they want to serve their family as they would in a grocery store,” Warzocha said. “It’s
wonderful.”
e ‘market’ will be open ve days a week, including some evenings and Saturdays or Sundays.
e rst such community resource center on South Waterloo Road in Collinwood with a similar format has served 35,000 people since it opened nine months ago.
“ is is being seen as a national model and we’re excited to bring it
to our neighbors on the West Side.”
e food bank acquired the West 98th Street property with some of the $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds from the State of Ohio for the food bank’s expansion. A federal earmark secured by U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown will help fund renovations to the property.
Warzocha said the food bank will initially serve as the landlord for Cuyahoga County o ces in the building until the county’s lease expires at the end of the year. She said the rental income from the county prompted the nonpro t to have to pay more than the county-appraised value for the site.
e food bank anticipates the new West Side location will open
in 2026, she said.
e seller was K&Z Mutual Realty of Maple Heights, which has owned the building since 1985. e investor group purchased the property through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Northern Ohio after the former Cook United Inc. Pick-N-Pay supermarket chain went through Chapter 7 liquidation.
e building dates from 1960 but was later converted to o ces. For decades, it has served as a West Side Professional Center for Cuyahoga County Jobs and Family Services. e o ce space was refurbished in 2017, according to county land records. Its condition in tax records is listed as “good.”
e food bank’s website discusses its plans to establish a West Side presence to bring operations closer to more of its clients.
Warzocha said buying the ofce/former supermarket will begin the last phase of an expansion plan the food bank launched in 2022 and has been planned since 2019.
Synthomer has made the rst oor of its two- oor headquarters in Beachwood available to the market. | CONTRIBUTED
CrainsCleveland.com
Associate
Interim
Director
Director
Jeremy
(216) 771-5255 or jnobile@crain.com
ADVERTISING
Senior vice president of sales Susan Jacobs (312) 649-5492 or susan.jacobs@crain.com Events manager Missy Chambless (216) 771-5388 or missy.chambless@crain.com
Sales and marketing coordinator Shannon Smith
Account executives
Kaylie Moran, Ed Sivillo, Melissa Streicher People on the Move manager Debora Stein (917) 226-5470, dstein@crain.com
Classi ed sales Suzanne Janik (313) 446-0455 or sjanik@crain.com
