City’s development corporation aims to help region ‘win together’
Posted By: Toledo Blade on August 14, 2025. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
City officials heralded the creation of a community improvement corporation that will prepare shovel-ready sites for developers looking at the city.
The Toledo Community Improvement Corporation will be funded through an agreement with Rossford in which Toledo will provide water to the city in exchange for a portion of its income tax revenue in the joint economic development zone.
“This enables us to continue that [economic] momentum in a way where we’re not fighting with our neighbors — we’re working with them in a way that benefits all of us,” Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said. “That, more than anything else, is why I’m so excited today, is because it allows us to compete as a region and win together.”
Mayor Kapszukiewicz expects the revenue from the joint economic development zone to amount to about $1 million each year for the next 35 years. The corporation will start out with a $5 million balance, which Rossford has held in escrow since 2019.
Brandon Sehlhorst, the city’s economic development commissioner, said the corporation will focus on creating housing and industrial sites within the city. He said that developers interested in the city want shovel-ready sites, and that the city needs to be increasing the amount and size of available properties.
“The goal here is to do site development; it is to be that tool that we have to proactively acquire sites, remediate them, and get them ready for new economic development,” Mr. Sehlhorst said.
The improvement corporation is functionally independent from the city — council members will not approve expenditures from the corporation but will approve its board appointments. It is formed as a nonprofit entity and will act under the direction of its own board.
“Part of what is so valuable about [the corporation] is that these funds … do not have to be approved by the city council,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said. “Sometimes on important economic development projects, the necessary bureaucracy of city and county government can slow things down in terms of getting money where it needs to go.”
The board’s ex-officio portion comprises the mayor; economic development director; council president; and the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The five appointed members will represent a minority business interest, another with regional economic development, a community organization, and then two at-large members from the business community.
Toledo City Council approved the agreement with Rossford at its meeting Tuesday but has not yet approved board appointments. Rossford will receive the first 15 percent of the gross tax revenues from the JEDZ for its public safety services. The remaining 85 percent of the revenue will be divided between the two municipalities with Rossford receiving 72 percent and Toledo receiving 28 percent.
Community improvement corporations are authorized under Ohio law and allowed to acquire, hold, and sell property and forge public-private partnerships that transform vacant or underutilized land back to productive use.
Toledo’s corporation has existed, though mostly dormant, since 2014. It was added to the city’s charter to induce the bond for the city’s acquisition of properties including Textileather, Medcorp, and the Southwyck Shopping Center but hasn’t been used since.
The agreement with Rossford revived the corporation, giving it a steady stream of funding to be used for land purchases and remediation. Mayor Kapszukiewicz said regional leaders have given “lip service” to cooperation in the past, especially conflicting over water use, but the recent agreement marks changing tides.
“Creating that regional water system was a big step in showing that this region is finally willing to cooperate and work together,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said. “It’s so much more productive that we are working together with our suburbs, as opposed to fighting against them.”
Councilman Sam Melden led the city’s push for approval of the agreement but said the agreement mostly sold itself.
“What’s exciting about this is that it’s the business of the future,” he said. “The truth is, [for] my committees and all of my colleagues on council, this was an easy sell, because it’s fundamentally about improving our community for generations to come.”
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