Church & Dwight, a multibillion-dollar manufacturing company, has expanded its Seneca County facility twice in the past five years, adding more than $90 million in machinery and new capacity and creating 140 new jobs in the process.
It might seem curious at first that companies like Church & Dwight continue to make that type of investment there — after all, the area is not exactly a sweet spot in terms of logistical ease, with no four-lane highway and rail accessibility that’s still a bit light.
And yet, that expansion is only a part of more than $800 billion in new business investments that have spurred creation of more than 3,400 new jobs — and retention of countless others — in the Seneca County area in the past decade. Tiffin, in fact, perennially earns recognition as one of the top “micropolitan” areas (populations between 10,000 and 50,000) in the U.S. for economic development.
The Tiffin-Seneca Economic Partnership (TSEP) and the Fostoria Economic Development Corporation (FEDC) have been active in finding ways to help the area beat some tilted economic odds — and Attica-based North Central Electric Cooperative has been working to be an important partner in those efforts.
“As a not-for-profit electric cooperative, our role extends beyond supplying electricity; like co-ops everywhere, we aim to enhance the quality of life, work, and service in our communities,” says Ed VanHoose, NCE’s president and CEO. “We not only keep the lights on, but we power economic growth.”
Co-ops are ideally positioned to be economic drivers within the communities they serve (see related story here). First, they are locally owned and governed, and their employees live there, too, so they have a vested interest in the prosperity of those areas. Second, they often have access to funding through state and federal programs to help pave the way for the kind of investment those areas need.
Recently, for example, NCE has facilitated funding for the Fostoria Industrial Park, collaborated on fiber internet efforts, and supported entrepreneurship programming,
But another part of the stacked odds in Seneca County has been that employers have had difficulty finding employees. A study commissioned by TSEP found that, through all that recent growth there, a large proportion of those new jobs are being filled by employees who live elsewhere and commute to Seneca County to work. “A lack of workforce housing is holding Seneca County back,” says Audrey Flood, manager of key accounts and economic development at NCE.
So the co-op, which serves nearly 10,000 members — mostly in the more rural areas of Seneca, Wyandot, and Crawford counties — is helping tilt the odds back in the community’s favor. “This area needs every type of housing, from very small rental apartments and condominiums to affordable single-family housing and luxury homes,” Flood says. “This is a unique situation where the market is having trouble solving the problem alone and there is opportunity for support from the public and private sectors in the community to help fill the gap.”
NCE has joined with real estate agents, lenders, local builders, representatives from county offices, and other business and community members on a task force aiming to spur new residential development.
The group is working to identify parcels that can accommodate a new subdivision with a variety of housing types and mixed uses — ideally with willing sellers and access to utilities. Once that’s found, ownership and development details would need to be worked out, along with determination of specific market desires and infrastructure costs.
Likely enough, such a large, undeveloped parcel would fall within the co-op’s service territory, making it possible for NCE to access low-cost federal financing for the project.
“Seneca County’s workforce and economic development teams are doing really great work,” VanHoose says. “Our region has two private universities, plus Terra State Community College, a career tech center, and a lot of partnerships building pathways that connect students directly to industry and career opportunities right here. We won’t let a lack of workforce housing hold us back.”
