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Development organization aims to fill Lucas County’s bathtub

Posted By: Toledo Blade on November 13, 2025.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

It’s doubtful that anyone but Matt Heyrman has ever compared Lucas County to a bathtub.

“I love metaphors,” he said as he addressed the Afternoon of Impact meeting of about 370 of the Toledo area’s business leaders at Glass City Center.

“Our economy has a faucet and a drain,” he explained during his high-energy presentation, which was the focal point of the meeting on Wednesday. “My goal is to turn on that faucet.”

Mr. Heyrman is the director of the Lucas County Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization chartered as a community improvement corporation. To put his goals in more concrete terms, his aim is the expansion of wealth in support of quality of life in the county.

Elaborating on his bathtub comparison, he asked the audience to imagine the water in the tub is the wealth of the county now. The water coming out of the faucet is the money coming into the county from beyond its borders. The pipes are the infrastructure that brings the money in. And the drain plug is there to prevent that wealth from trickling away.

In practical terms, Mr. Heyrman said his primary areas of concern are site development, regulatory efficiency, and retention.

“We work with developers, users, and communities to have a diversity of sites available where companies can grow,” Mr. Heyrman said. “We want to expand existing industrial parks and build new ones. That requires a lot of infrastructure involving roads and energy — the pipes that bring the water to the bathtub. It takes time to do those things.”

Once sites have been identified, the LCEDC helps businesses navigate their way through a web of regulations and permits. Mr. Heyrman said the county will unveil an AI assistant next year that will help businesses figure out permitting timelines, costs, and other factors.

The value of a little help

Matt Yarder, the executive vice president of Yarder Manufacturing, has been working for years on a project called the Legacy Business Park. Located in Monclova Township, the plans called for the development to become the headquarters for the company’s manufacturing operations.

He said he wishes he had had access to the capabilities of an organization like the LCEDC before he started.

“I had to learn about utilities and taxes and permitting and things that larger corporations have whole departments that are set up to do,” he said. “It’s very challenging to try to align all the pieces of a project like ours, so having a partner to point you in the right direction and remove obstacles is very helpful.”

He said he was aware of the various economic development organizations in the area but didn’t know how to time or combine his interactions with them.

“Now I feel it will be so much easier for businesses that are trying to expand,” he said. “I’ve felt like I was building the road as I was running the race, but now I feel like someone is building the road for me so I can focus on doing what’s best for my business.”

Because it is easier to create new jobs and opportunities at existing companies than to attract new enterprises to the area, the LCEDC gives particular attention to the retention and expansion of Lucas County businesses.

Inducing businesses to stay

Mr. Heyrman said 80 percent of the new jobs in any community come from businesses that are already there but also noted that not all businesses are equal in their capacity to generate wealth.

“We especially look to companies that do business beyond Lucas County that will bring outside money into the area,” he said.

He cited the example of Willy’s Fresh Salsa, a company based near Swanton.

“They sell salsa all over the country,” Mr. Heyrman said. “The Port Authority gave them some cold storage at the airport, but they needed more to expand. They were looking outside our region, at southern states. But we were able to find them a location and come up with the incentives that induced them to stay.”

Mr. Heyrman also addressed the perception that the Lucas County region has an inordinate number of public and quasi-public entities all devoted to economic development.

Help at many levels

JobsOhio functions at the highest level, he said, and markets the whole state to businesses looking to open, move, or expand.

Mr. Heyrman described the Regional Growth Partnership as JobsOhio’s regional partner and the gateway to their programs. The RGP’s purview is broader than Lucas County. He also mentioned smaller economic development agencies such as ConnectToledo, which specializes in the downtown Toledo market.

He emphasized that these agencies are not duplicating each other’s efforts and are in alignment on economic development goals.

What a fantastic program,” said Springfield Township Administrator Mike Hampton, who was in the audience on Wednesday. “What a way to let the region know that we are open for business. They couldn’t have picked a better team leader than Matt Heyrman. We’re lucky to have him.”

Mr. Hampton cited a recent instance where the LCEDC was very helpful to the township in moving forward with the Dorr Street and I-475 interchange.

“It was hung up for a few years,” Mr. Hampton said. “Matt and his team helped push it through for us.”

Ohio economy on the upswing

The meeting concluded with an address by J.P. Nauseef, the president and chief investment officer of JobsOhio, a nonprofit corporation that does at the state level some of the things the LCEDC does locally. It assists businesses that are establishing themselves, relocating, or expanding their operations by finding incentives such as grants, loans, and services. It also assists with site selection and work force growth, retention, and support.

His remarks celebrated the many trends that show that Ohio’s economy is on the upswing.

“In 2011, Ohio bottomed out,” he said. “We lost 18.4 percent of our jobs in our targeted industries. We were a bottom-10 state, bottom-five in most in most metrics we measure, 41st best for business, 47th for economic growth. Now we are a top-10 economic climate state and number one in the Midwest.”

Lucas County Commissioner Lisa Sobecki said she was impressed by the synergy on display at the meeting.

“By synergy, I mean all the people in attendance,” she said. “They brought an understanding of how we all grow together. There were township people, city people, business leaders, developers, and investors all in one room. We all benefit from that.”

Wednesday’s program was presented by Huntington Bank, whose senior vice president of commercial banking, Adam Freels, welcomed the participants to the first of what he hoped would be a regular gathering.