CLEVELAND, Ohio — Team NEO and the Fund for Our Economic Future are taking fresh aim at a vexing social and economic problem caused by job sprawl — the tendency of companies to locate new facilities in rural or suburban job hubs far from urban workers who need employment.
A new report completed by the nonprofit economic development organizations outlines a new quantitative method to measure the costs and benefits of competing industrial sites by showing how firms can measure and take into account access to transit, talent, racial equity, and environmental sustainability.
Such data could be added to traditional site selection criteria such as time, risk and money, to help companies choose locations for plants in Northeast Ohio that provide a stronger return on investment while providing jobs for communities that need them.
“We are seeing more and more companies coming up with diversity, equity and inclusion, and social responsibility strategies,” said Bryce Sylvester, director of site strategies at Team NEO. “But we’re not seeing those strategies playing out in the site selection process.”
Job sprawl has added to persistent urban poverty in Northeast Ohio, plus the challenges faced by suburban or rural industries located beyond reasonable commutes from cities.
Such commutes are often difficult for workers who can’t afford to own, maintain and fuel a car, which according to the American Automobile Association costs an average of $9,300 a year.
Bethia Burke, president of the Fund, described the sprawling pattern of Northeast Ohio’s suburban and rural job jobs as “one of the systems of inequality’' that has caused racial exclusion in the region’s job market.
The release of the report, entitled, “Where Matters,’’ marks the first public step toward the development of an online tool that the two organizations hope to provide in the first quarter of 2022.
The tool would enable site selection executives to compare and contrast urban versus rural or suburban locations for new or expanding businesses.
Sylvester said companies or communities seeking to use the new methodology should contact Team NEO to explore how it applies to specific sites. The report is available at jobhubsneo.org.
To develop the new analytical technique, the economic development organizations combined data from the Census Bureau, Walkscore, and other sources including EMSI, a labor market data company that calculates the number of workers available within a specific zip code, Sylvester said.
The report is intended to help Northeast Ohio attract more companies within reach of available workers at a time when the economy is expected to heat up as the coronavirus pandemic eases its grip on the economy.
The report appears after decades in which sprawl enabled by interstate highways has caused a massive shift in tax base and employment from the urban core of the region to suburban counties, villages, and townships.
Since 1960, Cleveland has lost 66 percent of its commercial, industrial, and residential tax base, while the tax base of communities such as Strongsville and Solon at the outer edge of Cuyahoga County has exploded by triple-digit percentages.
The report also parallels a related project undertaken by the Fund for Our Economic Future called the “Paradox Prize,’’ which offers a purse of $1 million to private companies able to devise ways to transport workers to suburban plants beyond the reach of traditional transit service.
Burke said the project is now conducting eight pilot programs.
The “Where Matters” report was completed with financial support from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Holmes Fellowship program at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Sylvester said the goal of the report is not to set up win-lose conflicts between urban, suburban, and rural communities. It’s to help companies find better ways to assess how site selection affects their bottom line.
“If it’s an urban site, we have to spend more time reducing risk,’’ he said. “If it’s rural, we’ll have to spend more time seeing if transit can be provided. We want to be as thorough and thoughtful as we can in both scenarios.”
By releasing the report now, Team NEO and the Fund for Our Economic Future hope to generate additional discussions with companies and site selectors in order to refine the online tool before unveiling it next year, Sylvester said.
“We’re trying to show everybody what we’ve done so far,’’ he said. “Our message is we’re going to continue to learn and sharpen as we move on.”
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