Solon, Twinsburg Officials Hope to Spread Economic Partnership Idea

It's easy for cities to talk about cooperating with each other for economic development.

Too often, they act more like fiefdoms fighting for whatever businesses and new jobs they can grab, even if it hurts a neighbor.

But Solon and Twinsburg have found a way to limit that poaching while still giving businesses free rein to locate wherever they want.

The cities, as a team, are finalists in the award for New Economic Development Practice for the 2011 Team NEO Economic Development Plus Awards by Team NEO Cleveland and Inside Business magazine.

And now officials hope to spread the word and get other communities to join them.

"What we're hoping is that other communities will take note and join us," said Peggy Weil Dorfman, Solon's economic development manager.

Solon Mayor Susan Drucker said she plans to talk to mayors and managers from surrounding cities in hopes of convincing them to join the partnership between Solon and Twinsburg.

The partnership discourages the two cities from stealing each other's businesses. When a business wants to move from one city to the other, the agreement caps the incentives, giving the home-base town an edge at retaining that business.

"If incentives are truly important, it gives the company some incentive to work it out with the home city," Weil Dorfman said.

Drucker said she feels the cooperation between the border-sharing towns is a "great start," but she would like other surrounding communities to join the effort and embrace this approach to economic regionalism.

"All you hear about is communities poaching businesses from one another," Drucker said. "Everyone talks about the issue, I feel what we did was step up and do something about it.

"When you are talking about business, you can't look at it in a vacuum in your own city," she added. "It's the Northeast Ohio region. We want to secure businesses in the entire region and help each other be successful."

The agreement puts Solon and Twinsburg ahead of the game in the region, said Larry Finch, community planning and development director for Twinsburg. While other communities often use complicated revenue-sharing models to limit competition for businesses, this method is much more simple.

"Peggy put a lot of work into it, I put work into it, and our mayors were involved in the decision," Finch said. "It showed collaboration and right now I think that is the 'buzzword' in economic development right now."

This is the second story of a two-part series looking at Solon and Twinsburg's partnership. .