For its first year of work with JobsOhio, Team NEO nabbed $4.1 million. That's more than any of its peers. Five other groups, covering different sections of the state, will receive anywhere from $1.7 million to $2.6 million.
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View full sizeTeam NEO, a regional business-attraction group, will receive $4.1 million from the Ohio Third Frontier program to refashion itself as the local arm of a statewide jobs agency. Mark Kvamme (pictured above) and state officials will visit Northeast Ohio on Tuesday to talk about JobsOhio and changes to the state's economic-development plan. The meeting will take place from 10 a.m. to noon at the Embassy Suites hotel in Independence.COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Job-creation efforts in Northeast Ohio will get a $4.1 million assist from the Ohio Third Frontier, a public-private partnership that announced nearly $30 million in awards Monday.
Roughly half -- $14.8 million -- of the awards will fuel the JobsOhio Network, a web of regional economic-development groups supporting a statewide jobs agency.
JobsOhio, the Kasich administration's private-sector response to the state's economic challenges, will rely on organizations including Team NEO - a business-attraction group based in Cleveland - to craft regional economic strategies and ink deals with companies arriving, expanding and staying put in the state.
For its first year of work with JobsOhio, Team NEO nabbed $4.1 million. That's more than any of its peers. Five other groups, covering different sections of the state, will receive anywhere from $1.7 million to $2.6 million.
Officials at JobsOhio and the Ohio Department of Development based their funding decisions on activity in each region - the number of significant business-attraction or expansion projects, as measured by "Site Selection" magazine.
Local partners like Team NEO will increase Ohio's ability to keep companies here and help them grow - something the state's development department has never been able to do effectively, said Christiane Schmenk, the department's new head.
"Our thought is to take it a year at a time," she said during an Ohio Third Frontier Commission meeting Monday. "This is a pilot project. I think we really need to understand what happens in the first year."
Officials at the Third Frontier program originally budgeted $24 million over two years for the JobsOhio Network.
Team NEO has started interviewing candidates for its JobsOhio office, but there's no firm plan yet for the $4.1 million, said Tom Waltermire, the group's chief executive.
"The proposal we submitted had a strong emphasis on growth of existing businesses," he said, adding that Team NEO also expects to focus on attraction and helping emerging companies take products from the drawing board to production.
Designed to boost the state's high-tech economy, the Third Frontier is developing a stronger emphasis on swift job-creation under Gov. John Kasich's watch. The Third Frontier Commission, the program's nine-member governing body, voted Monday to approve a $183.9 million budget for the program's 2012 fiscal year.
That funding comes courtesy of Ohio voters, who agreed to a $700 million bond issue to float the program from 2012 to 2016.
In the first year of that extension, the Third Frontier looks markedly different.
There is more money to help early-stage companies and provide investments and services for entrepreneurs. And there are new grant programs meant to help promising companies grow and to foster small, creative projects emerging from business incubators and communities that haven't received funding in the past.
During a meeting of the Third Frontier's 13-seat advisory board Monday, members also explored ways to recoup public investments and make the program more self-sustaining. One example: A new, $25 million fund focused on business loans, instead of grants.
Local economic-development professionals expressed little surprise about the changing landscape of the Third Frontier.
"It will provide us with the chance to help even more entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio going forward," said Ray Leach, the chief executive of JumpStart Inc., a nonprofit group that receives Third Frontier money for investments and services.