City
Economy Suffers As Industry Leaves Oberlin
by Jennifer Mellen
If
one were to ask the average town dweller about big issues in the
community, one of the responses would likely be, the industrial
park. A major community employer, the Oberlin Industrial Park,
sits removed from the road on West Lorain Street, little more than
a mile from campus.
Two of the parks biggest industries, Bayer and Wolf Envelope,
left the area last year, narrowing the tax base for the city and
the public school system. City Manager Rob DiSpirito and others
have been working to attract new business to the park.
Bayer was actually very successful, so thats not the
reason they moved, DiSpirto said. There were better
than 400 employees there.
Wolf Envelope closed down because
of some financial difficulties the owner was having with some other
companies. The latter saw the displacement of about 65-75
jobs, according to DiSpirito. When you have a loss like that
you
just hope that it doesnt have a bad effect on the rest of
the park.
To recover from the industrial park departures, the city aims to
fill its empty buildings. We dont have an economic development
director, so I perform most of his duties, DiSpirito said.
These duties include putting out marketing materials, creating websites
and generally fostering interest in the vacant properties among
realtors and investors.
The Lorain County Chamber of Commerce has assisted. Weve
been showing the building to interested investors. Both buildings,
Director Patrick McGowan-Doyle said. There was a recent marketing
convention in Chicago where both Oberlin buildings were represented.
Locally, Oxford Realty represents the Bayer space in finding a buyer
among northeast Ohio investors.
Well, we havent had a dream employer that says Hey,
Im just like the business that left and I want to move into
this space, but that rarely happens, DiSpirito said.
Sometimes communities struggle for many years. Yet the
search continues. Targeted businesses are those looking to relocate
or expand their production. While many are likely to be daunted
by the sheer size of the old Bayer building 192,000 sq. ft.
its realtors hope to find a buyer interested in the entire
space. Youre probably not going to find [just] one tenant,
DiSpirito said. The people at Bayer want to sell it in one
chunk.
Thats not the only challenge in the search for the right buyer.
In Lorain County there are a million feet of available space,
McGowan-Doyle said. Its not that demand is low, but space-wise,
the supply is pretty high.
Nearby resident Marilyn Feddlecheck-Harley is skeptical of the current
design of the industrial park, to say nothing of Oberlins
aforementioned taxes. Im very suspicious that part of
what the industrial parks difficulty in keeping businesses
in is Oberlins high tax rate, Feddlecheck-Harley said.
Personal income tax is high in Oberlin. You have a lot of
what you call middle or lower-end jobs. Its really hard to
justify when youve got jobs in Oberlin that pay $30,000 a
year or less. According to Dispirito, Oberlin has a one percent
city tax, 1.9 percent school tax and an additional property tax.
While an increase in industry in could ease tax rates by expanding
the tax base, the trick is in finding the industry.
Current inhabitants of the industrial park include Hydro Tube Corp.,
Express Seed Company and AgriNomix, Inc. Though AgriNomix is the
most recent addition, it shows signs of sticking around. Our
long term plans will see us staying here in Oberlin. We moved into
our current facility less than one year ago and our current site
was built with expansion in mind. Future additions would allow us
to more than triple our current physical size and therefore provide
ample growth opportunities, Rob Lando, president of AgriNomix,
said.
To some, such expansion is not immediately welcome. Express Seed
and AgriNomix were built extremely close to a pond. For residents
like Feddlecheck-Harley, accommodating industry is not worth the
sacrifice of natural beauty. Likewise, the 57 acres of woodland
rezoned east of the industrial park, across Oberlin Road, is an
unwelcome spot for careless business. With proper planning, of course,
effects on the environment could be minimal without inconveniencing
industry. The city needs to stand back and look at the long-term
impacts of its design plans, Feddlecheck-Harley said.
One avenue for development is to employ industrial ecology techniques
in Oberlin. A revolutionary few industrial parks in Europe and the
U.S. consist of companies using closed-loop resource systems. Industrial
systems can behave like ecosystems, where the waste from one process
is used as a feedstock for other processes. For example, in Kalundborg,
Denmark, the coal plant is selling its excess steam for use as heat
in the municipality of Kalundborg, Co-Director of the Oberlin
Design Initiative Casey Pickett said. But it doesnt stop there.
Other companies in Kalundborg are working together in similar fashion.
A drywall company buys up another companys gypsum output.
They have a steady supply
they dont need to keep
mining for gypsum anymore. Both companies are saving money. Lots
of money.
There are networks that can develop like that with a large
percentage of industries.
Youre actually increasing the
amount of productivity while decreasing the amount of product used,
Pickett said. And environmental impacts are greatly reduced.
Pickett sees industrial ecology as an incentive for green businesses
to come to the area. He feels that ecological ties in industry encourage
companies to stay put. The plan were pursuing is to
create eco-industrial relationships among businesses in Lorain County,
Pickett said. Its more like a five to 10 year project.
The Oberlin Design Initiative is working very closely with the Lorain
County Chamber of Commerce.
[Were] surveying companies
to see what products theyre using and producing, to try to
use them up.
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