Program Background

Northeast Ohio has historically been a manufacturing hub with associated transportation infrastructure to take advantage of the region’s strategic geographic location. As world wide competition has increased, the nature of the region’s business has had to adapt.

But this has not been confined to Northeast Ohio. The result has been intensive competition for business expansion and new business developments among communities throughout Ohio and virtually every state in the Union.

Creating and retaining jobs and their tax base has become a priority for community leaders. To address this imperative, successful communities have turned to economic development professionals for assistance. This has led to well designed approaches to attract and retain businesses.

However, in many cases, communities are not large enough to employ economic development specialists and must rely on untrained personnel or volunteers.

To help these communities and to provide a benchmark for larger communities that have a full time economic development staff, this program to encourage communities to become more “business friendly” is being developed by The Greater Akron Chamber and The Greater Cleveland Growth Association in cooperation with the economic development agencies of Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, and Portage Counties along with support from The FirstEnergy Corporation.