Greater Ohio urges major redevelopment effort for Ohio

This release was issued in July 2004 by Greater Ohio in response to a call for recommendations from the Ohio House Subcommittee on Growth and Land Use (also known as the Wolpert Committee). See the full document here (PDF file, 590 KB).

The State of Ohio should launch a major effort to redevelop its cities, infrastructure and transportation systems, a new state citizens coalition urged a state legislative committee.

"Redevelopment is Ohio's future," said Greater Ohio in a recommendation to the Ohio House Subcommittee on Growth and Land Use. "Local governments are hungry to support reinvestment and to re-energize their communities with jobs, modern facilities and services, and infrastructure improvements. Nowhere in the country is there a greater opportunity to lead redevelopment than in Ohio."

Six major recommendations aimed at redeveloping Ohio were submitted by Greater Ohio. They call for:

• Adopting a "Fix-It-First" policy toward Ohio roadways
• Providing state historic tax credits for rehabilitation of older homes and commercial structures
• Granting longer tax exemptions for rehabilitation vs. new construction
• Increasing the effectiveness of the state's alternative building code for older buildings
• Making available more accessible financing for rehab, mixed-use, infill development
• Enabling consolidations of local governments and services

"Ohio policymakers could lead our state in a bold new direction by championing a new state focus on redevelopment. As much as the 20th century was the heyday of new development, the 21st century will, by necessity, be the heyday of redevelopment. Economic trends assure us that redevelopment is destined to be the state's future," according to the Greater Ohio recommendation. "Why not embrace it and market Ohio as the Redevelopment capital of the United States? Ohio is in the perfect position to define a new course for the 21st century, demonstrating that our state possesses great resources and knows how to use them."

The Greater Ohio statement stressed that Ohio has "a dysfunctional tax code" reflecting Ohio in 1934 when most Ohioans lived and worked within a five-mile radius. Meanwhile, "Our local governments are engaged in a shell game of poaching jobs, malls and office tenants across jurisdictions, all with the help of state and local tax incentives."

The Greater Ohio recommendations highlighted to lack of growth in Ohio, explaining that the state is not experiencing real population growth and that Ohio is one of the slowest growing states in the Union, losing workers and personal income at the same time.

"What growth some Ohio communities experience is often at the expense of nearby jurisdictions," the Greater Ohio document stated. "Older communities, both urban and rural, are constricted by tax policy that does not reward reinvestment in existing infrastructure, roads and buildings on a fair and equitable basis as it does new construction in greenfields.

"Good public policy can work to change this dynamic, but it won't be easy. It will require leadership from the State of Ohio."

Greater Ohio's Steering Committee, which includes members from interests as diverse as Scenic Ohio and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in the U.S., approved the recommendations as an initial policy agenda. The organization is studying a variety of other issues, ranging from school funding to farmland preservation and will have more to say on other issues in the months ahead.

"The Greater Cleveland Partnership has had a long term commitment to redeveloping downtown and the neighborhoods of Cleveland," said David Goss, Sr. Director of Transportation and Infrastructure. "These recommendations would enhance the tools that are available to us. In fact, Cleveland developers have been using a federal historic tax credit for years, primarily for the redevelopment of older downtown buildings for housing — but a state tax credit would provide an additional incentive for other redevelopment opportunities."

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