Part 3 | The Budget Breakdown: This is the final of a 3-part story. This story looks into the proposed 2025 budget for the City of Toledo.
TOLEDO – The renovation of east Toledo streets and the Glass Center of Excellence, supported by a $31.3 million grant, are the two main economic development projects outlined in the 2025 budget, approved by Toledo City Council on Jan. 28.
The center will be “Ohio’s first innovation hub,” according to Gov. Mike DeWine’s website, and will “build on Toledo’s legacy as the ‘Glass Capital of the World’ to accelerate innovation and job growth in both the glass sector and solar industry, which relies heavily on glass.”
Unfortunately for Toledo, the center will be built in Perrysburg instead of the actual Glass City.
“The DeWine-Husted [Ohio governor and Lt. governor] Administration developed the Ohio Innovation Hubs Program in partnership with the Ohio General Assembly last year to spur investment outside Ohio’s major metro areas,” the governor’s website states.
“I do think Toledo will benefit,” Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said. “They could have picked any city, and they picked Toledo first,” for the first innovation hub.
Kapszukiewicz said that regardless of the location of businesses, the city will benefit if Toledoans hold jobs with the center. But incentives are unclear as to why someone should move into the city of Toledo when compared with moving into one of the many suburbs available.
Blight, crime and higher taxes are enough to push many people away from settling inside the city, especially when businesses seem to be comfortable settling in places like Maumee and Perrysburg.
Business in Toledo
Without new major investments from companies, Toledo seems to be stymied and struggling to maintain its current real estate.
Toledo experienced massive growth at the turn of the 20th century, with major investments from Willys-Overland, which would eventually become Jeep. In 1918, the first Jeep factory was the second largest auto manufacturing factory in the world, competing with Detroit’s auto industry contributions.
By 1925, 41 percent of all income in Toledo came from Jeep.
Kapszukiewicz has often said in press conferences and on his podcast, Wednesdays with Wade, “Toledo’s big business is small business.”
However, small businesses have been struggling in Toledo, and part of this struggle is undoubtedly the declining population.
Just in the waning months of 2024 into the new year, the Ottawa Tavern closed; The Flying Joe’s downtown Toledo location closed; Toledo Spirits closed; Heavy Brewing closed; and Three Dog Bakery closed their Toledo location, while both The Flying Joe and Three Dog Bakery are continuing operations in Perrysburg, a suburb that has seen consistent gradual population growth for the past 30 years.
Hopes are high for how Metroparks Toledo will cultivate economic investment with their Riverwalk, but the riverwalk echoes some of the traits of an earlier attempt cultivate investment through preparing a nice space.
Portside Festival Marketplace was Toledo’s attempt during the ’80s to create an aesthetically pleasing hub for smaller businesses along the Maumee River in Downtown Toledo.
“Toledo’s new marketplace was envisioned as the catalyst for downtown’s rebirth, and Rouse [the company that invested in the marketplace] asserted that it would have ‘a transforming impact for Toledo,’” from the book, Lost Toledo by David Yonke.
This project was met with swift decline.
The marketplace opened in 1984, plagued with criticisms about its parking and a very high-interest rate on the mortgage of the building. People were not interested in traveling into town to shop when they already lived in the suburbs with their own shopping centers, and by 1990 the marketplace was closed.
Later, the building was turned into COSI and now the Imagination Station, currently a thriving nonprofit, but not a business center providing economic lift to the city.
Try, try again
Another more recent blunder for Toledo dealt with the hopes placed on the Fresno, Calif. company, Bitwise, which promised to move into the Jefferson Center, providing real economic support to the city through job training.
Unfortunately, Bitwise imploded in 2023 and the owners pleaded guilty to an over a $100 million fraud scheme.
Making the best of an imperfect situation, Kapszukiewicz told the Free Press to watch what businesses move into the newly renovated Jefferson Center, although nothing is confirmed for now. Had Bitwise held up their part of the deal, Toledo’s economic development may have dynamically improved.
Local community member, Chris Hanley, pastor for Glenwood Lutheran Church, applauded Kapszukiewicz for his work in trying to spin Toledo as “on the up and up” during the Toledo Ambassador Academy program, but he also looks back on when he first heard of the Bitwise deal.
“I remembered thinking, ‘This seems too good to be true,'” he recalled.
The main challenges Toledo faces are in remediating blight, crime and securing major investments in the city to fix its revenue problem. Parks are highlighted by Toledo hopefuls as a means to bring people into the city, but more substantial incentives are required when the suburbs offer better housing, better tax rates and safer neighborhoods.
Perhaps the most substantial step forward in the new budget are the newly secured bond ratings and the stabilization fund of $60 million, which will allow the city to borrow with better interest rates.
The continued building of the IT Department for the city shows promise, especially with Engage Toledo doubling its numbers and moving many of the city’s services online and into a more convenient package.
But until the city can find a solution to its revenue problem, it will continue to work overtime on securing grants to bring money back into the city, something it has done very well.
Without a greater pace of restoration, Toledo’s population will continue to decline.
Population in Toledo declines by roughly 10,000 people every five years. From 2015 to 2020, the decline was 280,000 to 270,000, and before then, some of the decline was more severe. The most recent record for Toledo’s population was in 2023, where Toledo was estimated to have a population around 265,000.
With a new Republican president in office, it’s unclear what kind of money the city can expect to receive from the federal government, but, historically, it is unlikely Toledo will receive anything like a second round of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
“These are absolutely uncertain times,” Kapszukiewicz said. “No one ever knows what the future is going to hold.
Potential for the future
Late 2025 is the rough estimate for the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, a six-lane border crossing connecting the United States and Canada and leading straight into I-75. An incredible amount of potential exists for further economic development in Toledo, as this connection to Canada will substantially improve international trade.
2024 ended with a bad taste for one of Toledo’s most iconic employers, Jeep, who threatened to layoff 1,100 workers, but then backtracked this move in December.
President Donald Trump‘s largely publicized tariffs may have influenced Stellantis’s [Jeep’s parent corporation] choice to keep jobs in Ohio, as the president has been saying he will put a 25 percent general tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods.
It is unclear if Trump will follow through on his tariff plans, but there are fears that a general flat rate tariff would be detrimental to both the Canadian and northern United States economies.
“The United States and Canada are each other’s largest trading partners, for almost everything,” said Gregory Gardner, a professor of economics at SUNY Potsdam, in an article from North Country Public Radio (NCPR). Gardner said there have been disputes between the U.S. and Canada concerning trade in the past, but called the flat rate 25 percent tariff a, “nuclear strike on trade.”
Any changes to the negotiations could lead to different outcomes, including lowered tariff percentages, more specifically tariffed goods over a flat-rate tariff or any number of other concessions. But for now, Toledo will have to wait to see how it pans out.
“It is prudent to be cautious and conservative and to try to position your budget and your city in the best possible way for whatever the future holds,” Kapszukiewicz said. “I think this budget does that again. We, at the end of this year, will have a $60 million rainy day fund to help prepare us for that rainy day, if a rainy day comes.”
Kapszukiewicz has cast his vision effectively to shake off the “rustbelt” labels associated with Toledo, especially through the Ambassador Academy program, and continues to think positively.
“I think Toledo is ready to grow,” he said, and highlighted Detroit, Buffalo and Cincinnati as cities with recent growth. “If those cities can do it, Toledo can do it.”
