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Dayton can grow, but not to pre-1980s levels, report says

Experts say best way to boost economic development is focus on region’s strengths.

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By Tim Tresslar, Staff Writer 10:48 PM Saturday, July 3, 2010

Economic development experts say there is no one-size-fits-all formula for promoting growth or determining how much a region should spend on expanding its economy.

But as a general rule, they say, the regions that are most successful at it exploit their advantages.

“All economic development, in fact, all community development, is an asset-based strategy,” said Ned Hill, an economist at Cleveland State University.

In a tight economy, local governments need to make the most of every dollar they spend on economic development, said Gene Krebs, co-director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center in Columbus.

Cities, counties and economic development organizations can maximize their efforts by collaborating on a regional business plan that incorporates such issues as workforce and transportation, he said.

A recent “white paper” co-authored by Krebs’ organization, which advocates growth through better land-use planning, says Dayton and other major Ohio cities face shrinking populations, increased poverty, growing housing and vacant land surpluses and declining financial resources.

While Dayton’s population shrank between 1950 and 1980, it hastened after that, according to “Ohio’s Cities At a Turning Point: Finding the Way Forward,” the May report published by Greater Ohio and the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

Columbus was the only major Ohio city that didn’t lose population between 1980 and 2007, the report said. Dayton lost nearly 50,000 people, or 25.6 percent of its population base.

These cities will never likely return to the population levels they once had, the authors say, but that doesn’t mean they can’t grow.

They advocate a number of growth strategies that include overhauling state planning laws, creating programs that encourage business and residential investment around universities and hospitals, employing a more targeted approach in awarding neighborhood revitalization funds and encouraging more shared services among cities, townships and villages.

Experts say there’s no definitive way to calculate the payback a region gets in exchange for its development dollars.

“Economic development is one of the most under-evaluated parts of government that we know of,” Hill said.

Computer models can look at individual projects and forecast the benefits those will yield, but it’s much harder to figure out the returns from neighborhood or regional development efforts, said Shari Garmise, a vice president with the International Economic Development Council, a Washington, D.C., organization.

“If you’re investing in the transformation of a neighborhood or the rebuilding of a city or the rebuilding of a region — especially if you’ve got a whole industry decimated — you’re not going to get that back overnight,” Garmise said. “You’re not going to get that back in a year or two.”

Krebs said the multiple layers of economic development bureaucracy may hinder efforts, but Hill said the economic-development staffs of cities, villages and counties serve a critical role. Local development officials are there to walk businesses through a municipality’s land-use and permitting processes, while also assisting them in making contacts with bankers, accountants, attorneys and other service providers in an area, he said.

“Where you trip over yourself is when you take an economic development department and use it to hide a little piece of patronage here and there,” he said.

Jack Dustin, chairman of Wright State University’s School of Urban Affairs, said the region needs to track which industries are growing or shrinking and look at the expertise of the labor force when making long-range development plans.

“It’s sort of an ongoing process of figuring out what you’re really good at and trying to grow it here,” Dustin said. “If we want to invest publicly, if we want to use public dollars to support businesses, we ought to be supporting those businesses that have strengthened our economy, that have strengthened our advantages.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7317 or ttresslar@Dayton DailyNews.com.

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