Civil Municipal View Feb2023

64 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 attractions – two of which are international and a couple that are national. There are about 328,000 square feet that are under development or planned for development,” he reports. “We’ve had one large international company, LG Chemical America, which is building a 140,000-sq.-ft. facility. They also have a 90,000-sq.-ft. research and technical building that’s being built. In the beginning, the city was asked to compete for this project, which was a three- state competition – Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.” “There were two locations in Ohio; Ravenna was one of them. One thing that we had that the other sites did not have was rail. That’s because the owner of the site where they’re located had installed a 22-car transloading site to help bring rail transportation to Ravenna, instead of everybody going up to Cleveland,” he continues. “We also brought in a few other big projects, one of which is Menards. They’re from Wisconsin; they’re kind of like a Lowes or a Home Depot. They are going to build a distribution center here that will support three states: Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They purchased a 100,000-sq.-ft. facility on over 70 acres.” Mayor Frank Seman believes that another important drawing card for new businesses wishing to locate in Ravenna is the presence of University Hospitals