Largest Lake County Employers

Half of the top 20 employers are service providers such as government, schools and hospitals. The other half includes manufacturers, Progressive Insurance and retail stores. Growth for the period was a moderate 1.5 percent. Recognizing the top 20 employers of Lake County gives a perspective of the nature of the county’s economic base.

What are Transfer of Development Rights?

Building homes in the village of Hiram may be the key to preserving the rural landscape that is gradually disappearing from Hiram Township. The neighboring communities recently launched a two-year study of a planning concept known as "transfer of development rights," or TDRs.

So what is a TDR? Basically, it’s a trade: Communities increase the number of houses they allow to be built in population centers in exchange for developers agreeing to preserve nearby farmland.

The idea has been used on a limited basis elsewhere in the nation, but never before in Ohio.

"This is going to be the laboratory to see how it’s done," said Jill Clark, interim director of Ohio State University’s Center for Farmland Policy Innovation, which awarded Hiram a grant for the study. "This is the next step in the evolution of farmland preservation. We just need someone to take it."

The goal of the program is to direct development. In Hiram’s case, that would mean more homes in the village and fewer in the township.

Local leaders envision the process spurring growth in the stagnant village, which saw a population decline between 1980 and 2000 and hasn’t seen a new development in decades. At the same time, the program would halt the steady loss of farmland in the township.

The planning model holds enormous potential to slow urban sprawl in Northeast Ohio, said Kirby Date, who coordinates the Countryside Program at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs. She called on more communities to explore the concept.

The Ohio Home Builders Association opposes efforts to launch the program in the state. Vincent Squillace, executive vice president of the trade organization, said government shouldn’t lean on home builders to finance land preservation efforts.

The model works in many areas, said Rick Preutz, a California-based planning consultant who specializes in TDRs. Two of the most successful programs - in Montgomery County, Md., and the New Jersey Pinelands - have each helped conserve more than 45,000 acres.

Upwards of 200 communities across the county use TDRs in some form, Pruetz estimates. The concept debuted in 1968 in New York City to encourage historic preservation, then morphed into uses such as saving open land.

What’s accomplished during the two-year study will determine whether Hiram’s TDR project blossoms or dies on the vine, officials said. The TDR program, if adopted, would be overseen and managed by a joint village and township committee.