The Art of Collaboration: Developers, Towns, and the need for Housing

Episode Summary:

On this episode of Chamber Amplified from the Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, we tackle what retiring local home builders means for housing in the area, and how that impacts economic development. Host Doug Jenkins is joined by Amy Sealts from the Putnam County Community Improvement Corporation, who shares a how Putnam County is creatively addressing these very issues.

 Doug and Amy explore an innovative approach to nurturing the new generation of developers to meet the increasing housing demands in the region. They discuss how the impending retirement of seasoned home builders led to a proactive movement for the community, ensuring housing growth didn't stall. 

Key Takeaways:

• Retirement Challenge: The retirement of veteran developers posed a potential economic and community growth challenge that needed addressing.
• Community Collaboration: Building relationships between municipalities, developers, and economic councils is crucial for sustaining community growth.
• Strategic Incentives: Utilizing strategic incentives like tax increment financing can help encourage new investment and housing development.
• Diverse Housing Needs: Understanding and addressing diverse needs in housing types is central to aligning with current community demands.
• Slow and Steady: Recognizing that growth and development take time is important for managing expectations and encouraging long-term investment.

Music and sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Transcript

0:00:01 - (Doug Jenkins): Welcome to the show. I'm Doug Jenkins from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. On each episode of Chamber Amplified, we're examining issues impacting the local business community. Whether it's employee recruitment and retention, marketing, it issues can be really anything impacting your business or the local business community. Our goal is to give our members tips each week on at least one way they can improve operations and thrive in the current business environment.

0:00:24 - (Doug Jenkins): All right, so if you've been paying attention to Chamber programming, whether it's here on the podcast or some of the events that we've been having, we've been focused a lot on retirement, hiring business owners in the community. We've also been talking a lot about the need for housing to bring in more workforce to fill the demand of the jobs that are already here. Today, we're bringing those two topics together.

0:00:45 - (Doug Jenkins): My guest will be Amy Seals from the Putnam County Economic Development. They had an issue similar to what we're seeing here, similar to what a lot of communities are seeing around the country. And they kind of found a unique way to address retiring home builders and bringing in the next generation of home builders, all to help make sure that they had workforce housing in the area. So we'll find out how they did that in Ottawa and Putnam county and all around the county there as well. It's a really interesting story. I think you're going to like the creative solutions that they found and really didn't have to reinvent the wheel. It was just getting the right people at the table. Amy's going to tell us all about that in just a bit. Again, thanks for tuning in. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, you can rate and review the show. It really does help spread the word.

0:01:33 - (Doug Jenkins): Now, let's get into it. So you presented at a recent RGP meeting or a part of a presentation there and talking about housing and house builders and everything that's going on in that industry. And I found it really interesting because I think it tells a few different stories. One, why housing should, why we don't have as many houses as we need. But two, it talks about retiring business owners and what's happening there and are we getting new investment in the area? There's a whole lot to cover.

0:02:03 - (Doug Jenkins): I set it up there probably in a not real organized fashion, but I'm really happy to have you here to talk about all of it.

0:02:10 - (Amy Sealts): Thanks, Doug. What we were seeing here in Putnam county really was many of our contractors and developers who had been developing for decades were retiring or almost Retiring, preparing to pass off their business to the next generation of developers. And we needed to build relationships and help grow those developers that they understood the needs in Putnam county because the people that had been doing it for so long were finished and weren't really going to get a return on their investment.

0:02:40 - (Amy Sealts): So we started working with a new batch of contractors and developers about that time. And one of the big reasons was because we know that housing is one of the factors that companies think about when they're deciding if they're going to leave a region or grow in a region. So that was really the big impetus for us.

0:02:57 - (Doug Jenkins): So let's go back to the beginning. When did you start to notice this shift going on where all of a sudden you were seeing fewer and fewer local developers are noticing that they were getting ready to retire.

0:03:10 - (Amy Sealts): This actually started about four years ago. And what prompted it actually was a rather large expansion by Whirlpool Corporation here in Ottawa, which is the largest employer in Putnam County. And the plant manager looked right at us and said, we're going to hire 200 people over the next three or four years. Where you're missing out on a generational opportunity if there's not housing here for them.

0:03:32 - (Amy Sealts): And then, believe it or not, a couple weeks later, I was at BGSU for the center for Regional Development annual address. And housing was one of the things they talked about and they flashed on the screen. I think maybe the top half a dozen counties in northwest Ohio that really had the tightest housing market. And we were in that batch. And it kind of was a shine, a big light on it, like, we better start doing something now. So that's how it started and that's.

0:03:57 - (Doug Jenkins): An eye opening experience. And I think there's obviously, it's almost a twofold problem when you start to have the people who are building houses retiring. One, you got to have people to replace them. But two, in smaller communities, some of the national home builders, maybe they don't see that as the opportunity as some younger people who are in the trades locally can use that as really a springboard for their own entrepreneurship.

0:04:23 - (Amy Sealts): We did do a housing study shortly after that happened in 2022. And we thought that maybe people would be interested in things like villas and condos and that type of thing. And what we found actually was almost 100% of the workers, the realtors and communities wanted small single family homes. And we had a lot on both ends of the spectrum. So we have very small rentals and more executive, larger style houses. And so we had to find A way to communicate that with those new developers, that this was the niche specifically that we were looking for in Putnam County.

0:04:59 - (Doug Jenkins): How did you go about finding out who the new developers are and who the new home builders are? People who are maybe just getting into that space?

0:05:09 - (Amy Sealts): We shared the housing study that we did pretty widely. We had six communities in Putnam county that actually helped fund that study. And so we went and met with the public officials in the communities. They're the ones that are maybe hearing things before we might, as far as who's interested in doing that. And then we also went out and met with landowners and met with the existing developers and said, is someone taking over your business? Do you have a son or daughter or someone coming into the business that we can meet with?

0:05:39 - (Amy Sealts): We started building some relationship with that. We met with some of the assisted living and senior community folks here to see if there were some expansions that were possible with their companies. And we were pretty successful with those, you know, building those relationships.

0:05:55 - (Doug Jenkins): When. When you started to do your presentation at Regional Growth Partnership, it was music to my ears, because it's just. It's everything that I've been thinking about lately here at the Chamber and the retiring business owners, but not just the retiring business owners, trying to get new people to invest in businesses who are local or new people who are interested in really started testing their entrepreneurial spirit.

0:06:19 - (Doug Jenkins): What has been your experience just working with those younger companies or younger people taking over companies as compared to the past generation?

0:06:29 - (Amy Sealts): Well, in my experience, I didn't necessarily work with the past generation because I've been in this position about seven and a half years. And many of our subdivisions in Putnam county are 15 to 20 years old, and they're either full or nearly full. There's a few spots left. And so what we had to do was we had to go out and find a way to give the new people, the new contractors and developers, the confidence in that they had a team around them that would support this, both at the public level and the private level.

0:07:02 - (Amy Sealts): We worked with two of our communities to implement new incentives. And so these were things we heard about at the Ohio Economic Development Association. So some ways to maybe, you know, if they were on the fence post, how can we tip it over to win that and help them, you know, start out? It's very expensive, as you realize, to do the infrastructure just to get started. So some ways that we can help them jump that first hurdle, we're finding that they are hungry and that they do want to do this.

0:07:31 - (Amy Sealts): Just they need that little Extra support in the background.

0:07:34 - (Doug Jenkins): Yeah, let's talk about those incentives. Like you said, infrastructure is a huge, huge part of it. What were you able to do along with your partners in the county?

0:07:43 - (Amy Sealts): So what we did, what we didn't implement the incentives because obviously those have to come from the municipality.

0:07:49 - (Doug Jenkins): Right.

0:07:49 - (Amy Sealts): But we, we had some attorneys and some real estate developers in from the Cincinnati area that we heard speak at an annual conference and we brought them up here. We had a meeting that our communities could attend and they learned about some different incentives such as tax increment financing. And so a couple of our communities are helping the developers where they, they're going to put the road and the water and the sewer in.

0:08:15 - (Amy Sealts): But we know eventually this is going to be taken over by the village. Right. It's not going to be a private subdivision, it's going to be a public subdivision. And so there's a way that you can redirect a portion of the property taxes once those houses are built, where those will eventually go back to the developer kind of as a reimbursement after the fact for some of the infrast infrastructure.

0:08:33 - (Doug Jenkins): That's a great way to jumpstart home building in the area. So I'm really happy to see that take place. What are some of the things that you wish you knew then that you know now after going through this process.

0:08:49 - (Amy Sealts): How long it takes, how long it takes to move the needle? As I said, the, the first time we ever thought about housing was four years ago. And here we are, we have about 180 different lots and units that are underdeveloped in Putnam county right now, which is tremendous. We were averaging about 20 new houses a year. Obviously these are not all in one year. This is over a period of time. But we have some small pockets of, you know, six to 10 homes in some of our really small communities.

0:09:19 - (Amy Sealts): And then in a couple of our bigger communities like Columbus Grove and Ottawa, we have 30 to 90 lot subdivision and housing. So also what I wish I would have known was the different variety and the diversity of housing that really is needed as we see people, you know, aging in place. And that whole baby, baby boomer generation of maybe I'm going to leave the family farm that's six miles on the outside of town. And I really want to be someplace where I can walk to the place I volunteer, walk and get my groceries, you know, you know, do these type of things. And so I wish we would have realized then even a little bit more about how near amenities people really want to be. When they're living downtown, living, it really wasn't a focus here.

0:10:04 - (Amy Sealts): And that is a whole mindset shift in and of itself.

0:10:09 - (Doug Jenkins): What has your experience been? It's one thing, obviously, there's the interest in building the houses, but then you have to have these. The landowners who want to have those houses built on their land or sell to a developer, things like that. Those talks can sometimes be contentious. I know I've talked to some villages around the area where they know that they need more housing stock and different types of housing like you were just talking about, but they don't have anywhere to put them.

0:10:33 - (Doug Jenkins): How do they even start to bridge that conversation and get everybody involved in maybe moving forward on projects like this?

0:10:42 - (Amy Sealts): We were fortunate for a couple of our projects that are happening here in the county that some of the subdivisions that were maybe not completely full there was adjacent land. And so the people that were done developing and ready to pass this off to the next generation, they sold that property in its entirety. So maybe you had a subdivision that looked like it was finished, but Also there was 20 acres right next door that could be sold to that next individual for expansion. So we did have a couple opportunities for that.

0:11:11 - (Amy Sealts): And then we also have in Columbus Grove, they're doing something unique where the municipality is actually developer. It's their land. It's right next to the park. And so they're working with the gas company and the power company and marketing the lots and doing all the legwork, kind of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and doing it. So those are, you know, two or three scenarios that that worked really well.

0:11:35 - (Amy Sealts): It is something really to consider about zoning and growth and where you're putting things. As the community is growing, we always need to be looking, you know, 10 years out and make sure that we have some of those spaces that will be zoned and appropriately available for housing down the road.

0:11:50 - (Doug Jenkins): Do you find that this is a conversation that rural municipalities are more willing to have than maybe they were five, 10 years ago, that they know the need for housing is stronger than it ever has been and are maybe more willing to look at different ways to expand?

0:12:07 - (Amy Sealts): Absolutely. I don't think there is maybe a day that goes by that we aren't either addressing housing, hearing from someone about housing, listening to a business talk about this. And we also want to be careful that we don't tip the scale too far that, you know, as our population is, the number of the population is reducing, that we don't overbuild, and then we have, you know, a lot of vacancies. So, you know, if we all had a crystal ball, right, it would make things easier.

0:12:35 - (Amy Sealts): Yeah, the conversations definitely are there and the employers are the ones that really kicked it off for us, so.

0:12:41 - (Doug Jenkins): Well, very good, Amy, if people would want to talk to you a little bit more about what the process has looked like for you, or maybe some developers want to get in touch with you or what have you, what's the best way to do that?

0:12:51 - (Amy Sealts): We can be contacted@putnamcountyohio.com online and our office is 419-523-5595.

0:13:00 - (Doug Jenkins): Amy, thanks for joining us today.

0:13:02 - (Amy Sealts): Thanks for having me, Doug.

0:13:04 - (Doug Jenkins): It's interesting. We've heard a lot about tax increment financing in Findlay and Hancock county, and I think that Amy outlines a really strong case for how that can be used to prevent communities from stagnating. As we transition from one generation of business owner to the next generation of business owner, you have to have those incentives to get the new generation of investors moving along and then they become lifelong contributors to the community.

0:13:28 - (Doug Jenkins): I think that's a really good example of how that's being done. So thanks again to Amy for joining us today. Again, Chamber Amplified is a free podcast for the community. Thanks to the investment of members from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. Because of our robust membership, we're able to focus on providing timely information to the Findlay and Hancock county business community, run leadership programs for adults and teenagers, and be an advocate for the area, all while helping provide tools for our local businesses to succeed.

0:13:55 - (Doug Jenkins): If that sounds like something you want to be a part of, and let's face it, you want to be a part of that, let me know. We can talk about how an investment in the Chamber helps strengthen not just your business, but the community as a whole. That'll do it for this week's episode. If you have ideas for topics you'd like to hear more about in the future, just send me an email. Djenkinsindleyhancockchamber.com

0:14:14 - (Doug Jenkins): thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on Chamber Amplified from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.