While officials are pleased the first building is underway, Marysville Council Members want more accountability on how the city’s Innovation Park is progressing.
At Monday’s city council meeting, the group worked to formalize quarterly progress reports as part of the economic development section within the city’s strategic plan.
As part of the meeting, economic development director Eric Phillips and officials with the marketing firm of Lee and Associates reported their progress marketing Innovation Park.
Phillips said the marketing group has had “interactions” nine times with a developer, 33 times with an end user and five times with a broker or associations this year. Since 2018, the group has interacted 34 times with developers, 45 times with an end user and 31 times with a broker or association.
He said there is a quarterly newsletter that is mailed to more than 570 recipients, bi-weekly calls among marketers and with regional partners, and weekly and sometimes daily conversations with developers committed to the Innovation Park.
In 2016, the City of Marysville acquired a 206-acre property between Industrial Parkway and U.S. 33, investing more than $7 million to develop 33 Innovation Park.
In August 2018 the city completed a road inside the Innovation Park that allowed developers to access additional lots. In November, Southgate Corporation broke ground on the park’s first project, an 84,000-square-feet building. While there are no tenants for the building, officials believe it will attract Class A industrial and R&D projects.
“I’d like to see the plan,” said council member Mark Reams.
He told Phillips that he wants quarterly reports on the Innovation Park.
“We have invested a lot of money out there,” Reams said. “That is our future for jobs.”
He added, “we put the infrastructure in and we are betting on it.”
Reams said the quarterly reports should include targets and goals for marketing the park, how well those targets were achieved in the last quarter and what to expect in the next quarter.
The economic development officials said that some of the information would need protected because prospective developers and businesses do not want their information made public.
Reams said the information does not need to be developer specific, but does need to address progress the group is making.
Phillips said the progress can be “hard to measure.”
He said economic development team is working to make the city a “community of choice” for prospective businesses and residents and to “enhance Marysville and Union County’s overall presence and visibility to our targets.”
“It is about networking and getting the word out,” Phillips said.
Officials agreed to make the quarterly reports part of the strategic plan.
Also, as part of the meeting Reams addressed a headline from a recent Finance Committee Meeting, noting that city finances are better than expected.
At that finance committee meeting, City Finance Director Brad Lutz told the group, including Reams, “I think it’s been a good year overall.”
“I guess to that I would say it depends on what you expect,” Reams said Monday, noting that revenue for 2020 is above 2019 revenue, but below the increase officials projected before the pandemic.
He said that income tax collections are up nearly half a million dollars over last year, despite the pandemic. He said, however, that if you don’t count the money on bonuses the city collected in the beginning of the year, it wouldn’t have as much income tax revenue as last year.
Through October, property tax collection – about $1.7 million – is $207,499 or 13.8% greater than the same period from the prior year, but only at 96% of budgeted receipts.
Reams said the city has not collected as much in municipal court fines, emergency medical service fees or gas taxes.
He said the city did receive $1.2 million in CARES Act funding to help the city offset expenses incurred fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So that was a positive,” Reams said.
“It is still a little early to know where we are going to fall next year,” Reams said.
He added, “hopefully we can get this turned around quickly.”