Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland visited the Cleveland area Thursday morning to make an 11th-hour pitch for Issue 1 — the $700 million bond issue that would extend the Ohio Third Frontier program by four years if approved by voters on May 4.
Third Frontier is the $1.35 billion, 10-year effort to rekindle Ohio’s economy by investing in technology research, development, commercialization and entrepreneurship in five industry clusters, including biomedical. Without an extension, the program ends in 2012.
Since its 2002 inception, Third Frontier has created nearly 55,000 direct and indirect jobs; and created, attracted or capitalized 637 companies, metrics summarized in a recent Ohio Department of Development report. The program also has attracted $9 in investments and federal grants to Ohio institutions and companies for every $1 spent by the state. A report last year found Third Frontier had a $6.6 billion economic impact on Ohio in its first seven years.
Though the statistics — and overwhelming bipartisan support in the Ohio House and Senate — tell a story of economic growth, Strickland said he is concerned too few voters know about Third Frontier. He has received “encouraging” polling results that indicate Issue 1 is likely to pass, but he’s not ready to take victory for granted.
Neither are boosters from Ohio economic development organizations to institutions that have received grants to campaign leaders who have daily peppered tens of thousands of in-boxes with email urging passage of Issue 1. The campaign to pass the issue has been grassroots and low-key, coupling a yes vote for Issue 1 with a yes vote for jobs. There is little opposition to extending Third Frontier, except from financial conservatives who don’t want the state to add to its debt load.
Some backers are wondering whether lack controversy over the issue has lessened its buzz. Lack of an opponent made campaign fund-raising difficult because contributors assumed the issue would pass.
Strickland made his pitch at Quality Electrodynamics, better known as QED, the young Mayfield Village company that makes accessory coils to boost the productivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines that was launched partly with Third Frontier money.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“I am here today because Ohioans are making a decision during early voting, and they will finalize that decision on Tuesday. And they will determine whether or not the most critical economic development tool available to our state is continued,” Strickland told a small group of business, economic development and political leaders assembled in less than two days by the governor’s staff.
QED’s president and chief executive, Hiroyuki Fujita, said he would have been on a flight to Stockholm, Sweden, at the time of the pitch. But after getting a call two days ago from Strickland’s office, he changed his plans so he could share how his company has been touched by Third Frontier.
“In 2005, I left GE Healthcare to accept the position of director of imaging physics in the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University,” Fujita said. “The position was created from the Ohio Third Frontier Wright Center of Innovation in Biomedical Imaging.”
Fujita also incubated his company at Case Western Reserve. “In 2006, we moved to Mayfield Village to a building across the street,” he said. “That’s where QED was born. In 2008, we received another Third Frontier grant from GCIC, which is Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center. “Our company has been enabled by this very powerful Ohio Third Frontier program. I can even say, without it, QED wouldn’t be here today,” Fujita said.
His fast-growing company moved across the street to its present home early last year. “Just a year ago, it was empty,” he said of the Beta Drive building in which his company is the key tenant. Now, it’s filled with 55 employees, as well as engineering, testing and manufacturing equipment used to design and make coils for customers like Toshiba and Siemens.
QED’s job and technology have been “enabled by the Ohio Third Frontier program,” said Fujita, whose company was named one of the nation’s most promising young companies by Forbes magazine in September. The company has applied for a second grant from the program.
John Schellenberg owes his QED job as general manager of operations to Third Frontier. Schellenberg lost his job at Philips Healthcare in nearby Highland Heights, Ohio, when the company that makes MRI and CT imaging technologies cut workers to cut costs in late 2008.
Not only did Philips receive Third Frontier money for an MRI project “that is still going strong today,” Schellenberg said. “We have a number of people here from Philips.” But Third Frontier money helped start QED. “If the seed money hadn’t been put into things like this, I don’t know what would have happened,” he said.
Matt Finnerty graduated from Case in 2004 with a bachelor’s in physics. He left Ohio to get his first job but came back in 2006 after meeting Fujita and his staff. “I could see the energetic commitment of the group as well as the technologically interesting, cutting-edge medical devices being developed,” said Finnerty, who now is QED’s deputy manager of engineering.
“I can think of no better place to illustrate the importance of the Third Frontier program than here on this site at this company,” Strickland said. “What’s happening here is an example of what can happen with the right targeted investments in those sectors of our economy that have the greatest promise for growth and development.
“And so I’m here to say, ‘Please spread the word,'” he said. “We are very close to the finish line. I am so hopeful that in just a few days, we will all be able to celebrate a great achievement for the state of Ohio with the passage of Issue 1.”
