Hey, that's Ohio he is talking about................

 Heartland Manufacturing Renaissance | City Journal (city-journal.org)

Joel Kotkin points to good things (from an economic development point of view) happening in Ohio.  The Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority gets a nod:

The Buckeye State, notes Rick Platt, president and CEO of the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority, “never skipped a beat on funding development.” More than 60 such authorities in Ohio work to attract industry with capital financing, infrastructure investment, land preparation, and speculative building development. Such efforts often tend to be largely expensive money-wasters, but in Ohio they have proved more successful. For the past quarter-century, Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority has transformed the former Newark Air Force Base into a hotbed of more than 20 companies with a total of 1,650 jobs. The companies operate in fields as diverse as aerospace, medical products, automotive and energy-related products, and even the world’s first organic baby food company, located in the industrial city of Heath (population 10,000), one of four plant-based food firms in the area. Licking County’s manufacturing workforce has expanded by 10,000 this decade.

Ohio tuna...............................

 .......................................Really.  Protein-rich too.

Getting.........................................

......................................ahead of the trend.  We call this good news.

Rick Platt............................

If some future administration creates The Chief Manufacturing Evangelist position, I will be nominating Rick Platt for the job.  An Ohio guy through and through (ok, he's a Steelers fan.  Nobody 's perfect), no one understands the positive role of manufacturing in Ohio's past and future better than Rick. No one advocates more for the expansion of  STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education in our schools.  No one is more into public/private partnerships to make the right things happen.   His performance in his current role as President and CEO of the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority has been exemplary.  Our whole community has benefited from his labors.  Father of tripletts and an advocate for Black Hand Gorge, Rick also finds the time to run a must-read blog.   Here, here, here and here are some of his recent posts on manufacturing.

Embracing the making of things.......

No one cares more deeply about the growth of manufacturing, and all the good ecomomic outcomes that spin off from the making of  things, than Rick Platt.  Nobody is working harder to make it happen in our part of the world either.  Read about it here.

Field of Dreams.................

If you believe in the philosophy of "build it and they will come,"
welcome aboard.  The Heath-Newark-Licking County Port
Authority stretched a bit recently and decided to build some
speculative "clean rooms." 

Clean rooms are designed for usage where air quality and strict
control over particulate matter in the air is critical.  Usage could
be for research and development or for manufacturing.  While it
is a specialized use of a building, Licking County is no stranger to
clean rooms, as much of the workload at the local Boeing plant
revolves around clean room work.  We are hoping to build on
their presence and generate some significant new economic
development for our community and it's highly skilled workforce.

If you want a tour of the facility, all you have to do is ask.