Lima’s Growth Continues
In 2014, the Columbus Dispatch ran a story debating which economy, Columbus or Cleveland, was more vibrant. In the article, it stated that “Lima showed the strongest growth last year in Ohio at 7.9 percent, led by a strong boost in manufacturing. That growth rate was the ninth largest in the
country.” Great news for Lima; unfortunately, those two sentences were the last lines of the article!
The good news was that Lima’s growth didn’t go unnoticed by Governor, John Kasich. Local growth led him to do his State of the State address at Memorial Hall in Lima that year. Since others have noticed Lima as well and as a place for growth and to conduct business.
If anybody’s keeping score, a couple of thousand jobs were or are in process of being created: with a couple of hundred new jobs each, give-or-take, at Dana Corporation, P&G, General Dynamics, Pratt Industries, Airstream, and Husky. In addition, Mercy Health St. Rita’s is adding a graduate medical education program that will add one-hundred medical students doing their residency programs here.
This growth is the byproduct of good infrastructure namely, the Lima/Allen County Chamber of Commerce, Allen Economic Development Corporation and Greater Lima Region, Inc. Additionally, Ohio Means Jobs, Maker Fest, and other organizations are helping to let our youth and outside the industry to know that available jobs (1,200 at present) are available right here at home.
This is exciting to witness along with the growing pride that we make things in Lima. We make Ford engines, Honda subframes, the Abrams tank, gasoline, most of the liquid Tide and among other things for goodness sake, all the NFL’s footballs in America, are made right here in our region.
Written by: David Murphy