Since 2008, Mayor Richard Norton has created and initiated a plan to promote prosperity in the growing city of Green.
“We are doing things to make it happen so that we become one of the top 10 places to live in the country — that creates the ‘can do’ attitude, confidence in the voters and in the people who want to come here. It’s easier said than done, but we’re confident in what we are working toward,” Mayor Norton says. “(This thinking) helps us decide our projects and how we decide about investments. We really want to become that place and that city. We’re well on our way to that and we have a great reputation. So many cities just don’t have a vision and don’t know what they want to be, or they don’t share it with their city, but it is pretty clear in our city.”
Norton shares his vision and some of the reasons why it is feasible that in the near future, Green could become one of those top cities.
What makes the city of Green so uniquely appealing?
What was once farmland is now a growing and prosperous city. There is, of course, no one thing, but there are several that separate us from the pack — I call them differentiating factors. Certainly, that’s location; we’re halfway to Akron and halfway to Canton and you can get to Cleveland in 50 minutes. We also have the Akron-Canton Airport.
When you have clean, well-managed sidewalks, roads and parks, you have this very visible, valuable quality-of-life issue. With the airport, our location, our public school system — which ranks in the top percentage in the state of Ohio and has 96-97 percent graduation rate and a low tax rate — you get a lot of quality of life for a modest price.
Why should families visit the area? How does the city work to create an environment that is family friendly?
We are a family community. With all that we’ve been doing in terms of investing in our infrastructure (schools, airport, parks) and the wide variety of housing with modest pricing, when you have that, people do want to come here. We’re blessed with a lot of businesses and we work hard to attract them.
All three of the major hospitals have invested yet again in Green, including Akron General and Summa Health Systems, and Akron Children’s is moving into an expanded space. We have a vibrant health care aspect to our city with two full-service emergency rooms. Akron General’s big wellness center is trying to move to a “wellness” model from a “sick model” to keep people healthy and out of the hospital, and we want to adopt a “wellness” model for our city too. You can’t ignore these major investments in health and education.
Green hosts the World Series of Golf and is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We have 840 hotel rooms in the city of Green and most of them are new, so visitors can stay here and have access to all of these things and attractions. When they come, they stay.
Our income tax collection rate is up 20 percent this year and that is a function of us building jobs and really expanding businesses.
We try to spend our city’s dollars wisely. We believe in collaborations and we have a lot of them — I call them functional collaborations. We built a new city administration building that we share and we constantly make improvements to Green schools. Another collaboration is that we don’t have our own police, we subcontract to Summit County Sheriff, we’ve partnered with the Summit County Health Department, we hire our own building department to the county and we have athletic fields that we rent out.
Are there any plans to grow or expand areas of the city?
We have a lot of quality-of-life amenities such as land for parks. Our first-ever central park — think of New York City’s Central Park — is in the design process.
For the next several years, Central Park will consume a lot of our parks capital since it is a $6 million project. It will have a large body of water, three splash pads, a playground, facilities, our first permanent amphitheater right by our Green Memorial Stadium, great parking, and will be adjacent to the school and central administration building. The park is geographically central Green. The response has been good to that, and we plan to invest at least $1 million a year to build our parks because as soon as you stop investing in infrastructure, the city starts to decay and businesses leave. They want to come to places like Green where business is thriving.
We’ve invested majorly into our ball fields in the past few years and a world-class soccer field. We have high-end restroom facilities in our parks and we have continually, in a very deliberate way, invested in those kinds of amenities.
How does economic development and growth happen in the city of Green?
We’ve had continued job growth and we are growing business faster than residential growth, so we have a very well-planned growth pattern, which really makes it the way we want it. I never want it to be the fastest growing but the best growing and there are priorities set to help us do that.
Again, with our location to the airport, we have dedicated resources that promote business activity called “Charting the Course” to reach out to businesses to keep them apprised on what is going on in Green. In fact, we have every piece of (commercial) property that is for sale on a website to keep people aware, and we have special meetings set aside for retailers and realtors.
We brand the city and the combination of all these things, we pursue the people we want to come to Green and we react to those that come to Green because they’ve heard about us.
In terms of our finance — we’re in a great position, we have excellent ratings and cash balance and our revenue is growing. We’re able to invest in infrastructure and all of the things that people notice. They want to go to a city that has a strong financial position not only today but also where we’re going in the future. We’re a young city and we’re looking to the future.
We’re going to decide our own course and we won’t be assimilated into another community.
