MANSFIELD — The newly appointed CEO of Team NEO, Matt Dolan, visited Richland County last week.
If you’re one of those people who care a lot about the wonky subject of economic development (count me in!), you know Dolan is in the middle of a listening tour across the 14 counties Team NEO represents.
He’s talking to business and community leaders and gathering a sense of where each county stands on its own, and as part of the overall Northeast Ohio region.
What is Team NEO
JobsOhio is the leading economic development (think business, jobs, and payroll growth) for the state of Ohio. Team NEO is sort of like a regional manager, covering places like Cleveland, Mansfield, Ashland, Akron and Medina.
Team NEO is one of seven economic development partners for JobsOhio, each covering a portion of the state’s 88 counties. At the lowest level, the Richland Area Chamber and Economic Development organization is responsible for Richland County.
There’s usually one or more of these boots-on-the-ground organizations per county, depending on population.
Who is Matt Dolan?
Matt Dolan has a long career in state politics. He served eight years in the Ohio Senate and five years in the House of Representatives.
He’s twice run for U.S. Senate, most recently in 2024 where he lost in a primary bid to eventual winner and now U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio).
Prior to that, Dolan was a businessman and attorney. If none of this rings a bell and his last name is still familiar to you, Dolan’s family has owned the Cleveland Guardians since the year 2000.
I sat down with Dolan at Hudson & Essex for a short interview last week. I found him to be an engaged, interested and focused conversationalist with some distinct ideas and initiatives for Team NEO.
Our conversation is below. It’s been lightly edited for clarity.
Our conversation
Richland Source: Why did you take this job?
Dolan: As my time in the state senate came to an end, I saw this as an opportunity to extend my private and public sector career. I spent a lot of time on economic development over my career. Whether as a lawyer, owning family businesses or in the legislature. I also saw that Northeast Ohio has so many opportunities. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. I wanted to learn about how we could better position ourselves for opportunities that exist now. Companies who are already here, or haven’t come here yet, need to know this is a place they want to grow.
Richland Source: Economic development work is fundamentally collaborative, according to folks in your field. A perplexing thing about collaboration is it seems to be one of the easiest words to say, yet is one of the hardest things to truly pull off. You mentioned earlier that sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. What habits do we have to break as North Central Ohio or Northeast Ohio to position ourselves in the way that you’re outlining?
Dolan: I wouldn’t phrase it as “habits to break.” I’d say we have to be aware of what each county, economic development organization or city brings that’s unique to economic development opportunities. What I’ve spent a lot of time with Team NEO saying to communities is, “Look, we want to be your partners. Here’s what we bring to our partnership. Here’s what’s unique about us.” We (Team Neo) are the Jobs Ohio regional partners, so state incentives flow through us. We do a lot of attraction work. We do a lot of site work. When we come in, we’re not trying to change the culture of Richland County. We’re not trying to step all over the county or the economic development organization.
We have a research team that’s been a lot of time trying to figure out what businesses need. You know, where’s the growth going to be? We work with the education department. But we need our cities to make sure that the permit process goes quickly. That the streets are safe. That the county understands that the roads need to be passable. That’s all economic development.
If each county or city tries to centralize all economic development work in their community, then there’s where we’re not as successful. I talk about it in terms of Richland County’s success is Northeast Ohio’s success. I said at a lunch today that I want Richland County to work as hard as they possibly can to put the best case forward for why companies should come here.
And I expect that to happen in all the counties we serve at Team NEO. What’s important is that they come to Northeast Ohio. For Mansfield, it’d be great if they came here. But if they end up in Summit County, it’s better that they weren’t in Indiana or they weren’t in Mexico.
Richland Source: I appreciate that framing. It’s easy to have a win-loss attitude. If Summit County wins a project, then Richland County lost, right? What I’m hearing you say is we need to think of this regionally. Is that right?
Dolan: Yeah. But it’s also a matter of trust. I mean, people have to know that Team NEO is coming down here to work in the best interest of Richland County. Folks need to trust we’re not trying to get companies to go from Richland to Ashland or somewhere else.
Richland Source: Is there a rule of thumb for economic development of new versus existing employers?
Dolan: Here’s the thing, 80% of the job creation comes from existing employers.
So, we want to make sure that those who are already here in Richland that whatever incentive they need, whatever grant they need, we are available to them to get it so they can grow and add jobs.
Richland Source: I did a little bit of research before our conversation and I found an interview where you talked about data-driven economic development and a set of vibrant economy indicators. Does that sound familiar?
Dolan: Yes. It is a program we just rolled out. We’re excited about the possibilities.
The Vibrant Economy Indicators are designed to do a number of things. First, it’s to create as many data points as we can to get a real honest picture of what we have here in the region. The good or the bad.
Richland Source: You mentioned that the program just rolled out. Where does the data collection to make it work stand today?
Dolan: I don’t know that we could show you anything that’s determinative yet, but we’re going to use it in the talent space and with workforce development to begin with. We’re still in the early stages of data collection. The initial data sets we use are publicly available. We can pretty easily start with census data, educational achievement, poverty indexes and so on.
But that said, if Mansfield and Richland County want to move much faster we are ready to accommodate you.
Richland Source: I think we all know the story of our economic past in Mansfield and north central Ohio. What do you think the story of our future is going to be?
Dolan: Our history is great and exciting, we can sell it. It’s also our challenge. We have properties that need brownfield remediation. We have properties all throughout the region that need buildings to be torn down and built back up.
We were a manufacturing stronghold. So, that provides lots of opportunity, but it also requires a lot of upfront investment that some other communities, i.e. Columbus, which has wide-open fields, doesn’t have to.
So, it is in fact our history, but it’s that same history that if you look at the 14 counties that make up Northeastern Ohio, our economy is the best in the state and we’re better than a lot of states, even. And it’s because of our advanced manufacturing, because of our materials, because of our logistics, and where we sit in relation to Canada and the Great Lakes. It’s because of our quality of life, it’s because of our cost of living and because of our growing technology sector. That’s not insignificant.
And we have schools that are hopefully adapting to the changing needs. You know, I would hope that Ohio State Mansfield and North Central State are going to the 179th and saying, “What do you need and how soon do you need it?” and then building curriculums around what they learn.
And from what I understand from this visit, those efforts are well underway.
Richland Source: Well, it’s interesting because I remember a long time ago, it might have been even 10 years ago, I spoke with a president of a bank here and he was very involved in economic development, as often bank presidents and small Midwestern cities are. He said, the thing that worried him the most is waiting on that pitch that is going to be a home run, while we are neglecting to move the runners around the bases.
“We need to hit singles,” he said, “You know, five jobs here, 10 jobs there. A small manufacturer, a small business, a startup news organization.” I’m hearing that same message coming from you.
Dolan: A lot of what we do (at Team NEO) is our state incentives and appropriately our incentives are designed around job creation. I was just at a plant in one of these tours Tuesday where it was a 100-yard line monitored by one person. One person!
This is not uncommon. We’ve got to start thinking in terms of competitiveness and productivity. If we can land a huge plant with 4,000 jobs in the state of Ohio, great. But where we don’t have that property, we’ve got to recognize that job creation is great, but it can come from anywhere and in smaller groups of 10, 50 or 100 jobs.
Those folks are gainfully employed, paying taxes, buying a house, going out to dinner, sitting and having a drink in a local restaurant. Same thing with capital expenditures. What does that mean? Someone’s either bought a piece of equipment that had to be trucked here, that has to be manufactured here or put together here. In either case, it’s a win for Northeast Ohio.