Ashland, Ohio

ASHLAND , OHIO Miller: “The biggest employer in the City of Ashland is Charles River Laboratories. They are a pharmaceutical test company. More than 85 percent of the drugs approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration, last year, were tested, at some point, by Charles River Laboratories. So, they are a very successful and prominent company in that industry, and we’re so glad they call Ashland home. They have more than a thousand employees and when we met with their executive leadership team and asked what our city can do to help them be successful, the first thing they said was, ‘We need more apartment housing and condo living.’ The young folks working at their facility do not want the hassle of home ownership; they want the convenience of being able to go home to a nice, professional environment, and not have the worries that many have with home ownership. That’s why that apartment housing is so important to us. “Number two: We’re also a university town, and Ashland University, a small, Midwestern, private college is located just several blocks away from our downtown. And one thing that we repeatedly hear is that the college professors and university staff are interested in living closer to downtown, where they can walk to a coffee shop, walk to a restaurant, bike easily to work every day, and that is why, for us, this Pump House project is so important, because they will be mixed-use properties, hopefully featuring office space and retail on the first floor and, perhaps, housing on the second floor. And we’re very excited because at our last official council meeting of last year, we sold the first portion of land in the Pump House District to a local developer who’s planning to construct 32, two-story townhouse apartments at that location. And we really think that that will be the catalyst for more activity. “Another project that we’re working on: in the geographic center of our downtown there used to stand the world headquarters of the Myers Pump Company that used to manufacture those old pumps that people had on their farms.