Being chosen to lead a $10 million, two-year effort to promote and build Ohio’s defense and aerospace industries might seem like a tall order.
But the Dayton Development Coalition, the entity that Ohio chose for the task, has experience in doing the defense-oriented economic development work and the state government contacts to handle the new assignment from the Ohio Department of Development, the coalition’s top executive said.
“We’ve been doing it for years,” says Jeff Hoagland, president and chief executive officer of the coalition, an organization of Dayton-area companies and local governments. “We have been successful.”
State officials said last week that they have commissioned the coalition to help develop a statewide industry for unmanned aerial vehicles and their electronic equipment, devise a strategy to protect and retain jobs at Ohio’s military facilities, and promote the state as a prime location for aerospace and defense companies to locate and expand.
It will pit Ohio against competitors including California, New Mexico, Florida, Texas and other states with Air Force bases, aerospace manufacturing, space technology or research centers.
Ohio is hiring the Dayton coalition for $10 million over two years. The coalition is to use $7 million of it for economic development efforts. Wright State Research Institute is to use the remaining $3 million for research, training and product commercialization initiatives that will align with Wright-Patterson’s ongoing research to improve human interaction with military technology.
The coalition is also serving as a regional economic development partner for the Dayton area with JobsOhio, the state’s newly privatized job creation entity. JobsOhio is in the process of hiring “general managers” for six economic development sectors, including aerospace. The coalition will work with the state’s aerospace GM on efforts to attract or retain aerospace and defense companies in the state, Hoagland said.
It is intended as a statewide effort, but it will still focus on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base because of the base’s status as Ohio’s largest single-site employer and a center of Air Force research and development, acquisition, aerospace medicine and intelligence-gathering, coalition officials said.
The Dayton coalition has been involved in working with Wright-Patterson since 1994.
The organization coordinated regional support that helped Wright-Patterson to be selected in 2005 to receive aerospace medicine and additional sensors research programs that contributed to a net gain of 1,200 jobs this year.
That experience, gained in the nation’s 2005 base realignment and closure process, proved valuable for the coalition and Dayton region leaders, coalition officials said.
Joe Zeis, the coalition’s chief strategist, said he has developed statewide contacts through his efforts of recent years in working for the Ohio Aerospace and Business Aviation Council, an Ohio Department of Development entity. That has included helping explore research areas in which Wright-Patterson and NASA’s Glenn Research Center at Cleveland can work together.
The coalition will tell defense contractors looking for increased return on their investments that they can attain it by locating near Wright-Patterson or NASA Glenn, Zeis said.
“The industry is looking for ways to consolidate and get greater value for defense consolidation,” he said.
Advocating for Wright-Patterson is critical to Ohio’s aerospace future because of the base’s status as a major employer and center for military research and acquisition, said Ned Hill, an economic development consultant who is dean of Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs.
It makes sense for Ohio to take advantage of the coalition’s experience in advocating for Wright-Patterson, Hill said.
Donald Jakeway, who served for seven years as Ohio’s development director under former Gov. George Voinovich, said he likes Ohio’s decentralized effort to spread economic development efforts across various regions of the state.
JobsOhio, the state’s new privatized job creation entity, has created six geographic regions in Ohio designed to decentralize and speed state responsiveness in economic development efforts.
Jakeway said that is somewhat similar to the decentralized approach he used as development director from 1991 to 1997, in order to get development efforts closer to communities and out of Columbus.
Emphasizing Wright-Patterson as a magnet for attracting more defense industry contracting companies continues to make sense, he said.
“Wright-Patterson is a key linchpin to anything existing today and into the future, relative to the Air Force and the military,” said Jakeway, who now heads a San Antonio, Texas, entity redeveloping the former Brooks Air Force Base there into a commercial park that is home to research and technology companies.
By John Nolan, Dayton Dailey News