Last November, while visiting El Salvador, I dined with a group of Salvadorans who asked me about Ohio. Just after I was asked about my home state, an American ex-pat, who I hadn’t met before, interjected and said, “Ohio’s a ‘fly-over’ state.” The comment galled me. We are the home to The Ohio State University, Lake Erie, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the championship Cleveland Cavaliers and a history of Ohio inventors from the Wright brothers to John D. Rockefeller. Fly over?
Thinking a bit more about the “fly over” comment on my flight home to Ohio I began to think about what a “destination Ohio” strategy might look like and how the next governor might lead it. It won’t happen overnight, but the seeds can be planted, and some seeds already planted can be further sown.
Leveraging Our Eds and Meds Assets:
The majority of Ohio’s residents can reach a college within 30 minutes of their home. State leadership should be thinking of policies to leverage our institutions of higher learning and retain the talent after graduation. Our network of community colleges represent today’s job training centers that bridge skill gaps between secondary schools and today’s information economy. Ohio’s schools of higher education are the center of our growing innovation ecosystem.
The State of Ohio is home to some of the largest and most pioneering medical facilities in the world that employ hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. It’s time to accelerate investments around our strengths in medicine and education. Our educational centers are needed to train and retain the workers and residents of the future, and we can leverage our hospital systems to commercialize health and biotech research to create innovative new companies.
Transportation:
Ohio currently ranks in the lowest 10 percent of states funding public transportation, lagging behind more rural states like North and South Dakota, while neighboring states like Pennsylvania are making large investments in transit. Our policies need to change as we work to attract millennials, who are less concerned with driving their own vehicles, and retain older Ohioans that can no longer rely on driving to get around. Our transportation planning must look beyond the car, from trains to busses to bikes if we are going to be prepared for the needs of the future.
Energy:
Thanks to the work of Cleveland nonprofit LeedCo, Ohio will have the first offshore wind turbines of any inland state in the Great Lakes by 2021. We should harness the momentum to develop a diverse energy portfolio as neighboring Midwest states from Pennsylvania to Illinois have accomplished. With a legacy of industrial manufacturers, Ohio could be a production center for future turbines rather than just an importer, and a leader in modern manufacturing.
Leveraging Our Natural Assets:
Utilizing natural assets like Lake Erie to position Ohio as a logistics center with partners like the Port of Cleveland can position Ohio to become a global distribution center of containerized shipments to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Our state is well positioned between the major population centers of the East Coast and Midwest and must continue to leverage our geographic advantages.
Promoting Ohio:
A decade ago, Michigan created the gold standard of state destination marketing with its Pure Michigan campaign. There is nothing standing in the way of Ohio when it comes to destination marketing. Tourism is a huge opportunity for growth in Ohio given our natural and historic attractions. We are home to incredible national and state parks, Lake Erie and the Ohio River, and other pristine locations for outdoor recreation. Individual assets from amusement parks to museums, zoos to historic presidential sites, the Pro Football Hall of Fame to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, are individually marketed but never connected together. If Alabama can build a tourism market around golf courses and Kentucky around the bourbon trail, Ohio can build a tourism market around historic trails like our unique history of presidential homes in the most famous swing state and Hall of Fame tours from the Pro Football Hall of Fame to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But all of this will take the intentional efforts of a governor focused on developing destination Ohio for the next generation. Ohio, we can do this.