Governor to announce state's first Innovation Hub, in NW Ohio

A consortium of Toledo glassmakers and universities appeared Sunday to have snared state funding for the first of Ohio’s Innovation Hub projects, with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and others scheduled to formally announce the project Monday in Perrysburg.

The Northwest Ohio Innovation Consortium applied for $31.4 million in state funding to get the project to help the Toledo area’s four glass manufacturers develop stronger, lighter-weight glass that also is cleaner to produce.

As part of that proposal, the universities and companies involved pledged a $10.5 million match for research and development, and said they would continue to seek grants and private funding for projects as research advanced.

Mr. DeWine had said during a March appearance at the Regional Growth Partnership’s annual meeting in Maumee that the $125 million Innovation Hubs program was designed to function as seed money to promote Ohio’s existing, legacy industries, promoting research that would support existing jobs and create new ones.

“Part of the goal is to really leverage our higher education institutions and to attract more research dollars,” Mr. DeWine said then. “So, one of the ways to measure it is how much additional money will we be attracting for research.”

The governor is scheduled to visit the O-I Glass headquarters complex in Perrysburg on Monday morning, along with Lt. Gov. Jon Husted; Lydia Mihalik, the director of the Ohio Department of Development; Roger Smith, president of the Northwest Ohio Innovation Consortium; John Haudrich, O-I’s senior vice president and chief financial officer; Rodney Rogers, the president of Bowling Green State University, and Matt Schroeder, the interim president of the University of Toledo.

Along with those organizations, NOIC’s members include Libbey, Owens Corning, Pilkington, Dana, First Solar, several labor unions, and Owens Community College.

Mr. Smith said in March that the NOIC grant proposal envisioned internships for students at local colleges and career-tech high schools, as well as a summer camp for high school science, technology, and math students.

The universities also would hire graduate students and researchers to advance glassmaking technology.

Mr. DeWine remarked at the time that beyond the Innovation Hub program, Ohio also had set aside $300 million for high school tech centers to expand and buy modern equipment to promote technology education.