LOGAN — Many rural counties across Ohio are losing their workforce to large metropolitan areas like Columbus, but Hocking County may soon be able to reverse that trend.
Joy Davis, executive director of the Hocking County Community Improvement Corporation, said Hocking County has made strides toward becoming an attractive option for companies looking to build outside of areas like Columbus.
“We are seeing increased activity in our economy here, there are manufacturers that have taken looks at what it’s like to do business in Hocking County,” Davis said. “The timing is very good for us right now to be able to attract some attention.”
Some of this increased activity will likely come in the form of an industrial park located on Chieftian Drive near Hocking College, a 40-acre site that was recently authenticated and is ready for development.
The industrial park is one of only two commerce park sites in Appalachian Ohio that has been authenticated, said Mike Jacoby, president and CEO of Appalachian Partnership for Economic Growth, making Hocking County one of the more attractive Appalachian communities for potential business.
Jacoby said it is often difficult for rural areas to authenticate sites for industrial parks because companies are reluctant to invest in areas that are not guaranteed to turn a profit. However, this ultimately leads to large cities like Columbus picking up the workers that are unable to find employment in Hocking County.
“We’re hollowing out our small towns and then we’re creating infrastructure challenges in Columbus,” Jacoby said. “It makes us harder and harder to have thriving, vibrant communities in rural Ohio when so much talent is being sucked to the central city.”
More than 60 percent of Hocking County residents commute to a different county for work every day, some even travelling nearly three hours to Hamilton County.
Of Hocking County’s 9,300 workers, only 2,900 work in the county. Roughly 18 percent commute to Fairfield County, more than nine percent commute to Franklin County and the rest to other surrounding counties.
Residents often don’t want to leave their families and uproot to a new town, but need employment. Being the closest metropolitan area, Columbus offers many opportunities for rural workers, with the trade-off being several hours of commute time every day.
Jacoby said that companies have been slow to invest in the Appalachian region for a multitude of reasons.
“In a rural area, you just don’t have the same synergies that Columbus has,” said Jacoby. “For a private builder to go to Hocking County and build a speculative building you just have fewer opportunities, fewer companies that are in the area that want that building and you’ve got kind of a harder marketing job.”
Columbus is expected to grow by 600,000 people by the year 2050, a recent Urban Institute report found, but Ohio as a whole will only grow by 100,000. Those 500,000 residents will likely be relocating from the rural parts of the state, Jacoby said.
This can result in a drain of workers from rural communities, like Hocking County, where the youngest members of the workforce leave to start careers in large cities, leaving behind aging communities that are unable to fund schools and other government entities.
One program that could help rural areas develop industrial parks is the Rural Industrial Park Loan Program. Formerly run by the Ohio Department of Development, which no longer exists, the program would provide partial grant money and flexible loans that would allow developers to not make payments on a building until a tenant had moved in or five years had passed.
Several surrounding counties have used this program to build commerce parks, but Hocking County’s commerce park was funded by money from the US Economic Development Administration, which is typically difficult for rural communities to obtain, Jacoby said.
A group of Ohio legislatures is working to reactivate the RIPL program through Ohio House Bill 695, which was introduced on May 22.
Because of the abundance of workers that are located in Hocking County but not working in the area, Jacoby said that a company that locates to this park, and to the area in general, would not have a hard time finding employees.
“With the low unemployment that central Ohio is experiencing and the growth that central Ohio is experiencing, we feel like it’s got good prospects for getting some interest from growing companies that may be wanting to come to an area where they can find a labor force more easily,” he said.
By SARA STACY: Logan Daily News Reporter | May 31, 2018
