SALEM — Julie Needs, Sustainable Opportunity Development (SOD) Center and Elevate Building Solution executive director, updated the economic development committee on quarters one and two of 2025 Wednesday.

Through June 30, Elevate has issued 83 building permits and conducted 87 inspections this year, which Needs said has led to approximately 298,612 square feet of new construction and $4,193,507 invested in commercial building projects. Needs said that this year the department had more small projects, which reflected Elevate’s continued efforts to educate residents on when a permit is needed or not.

“We have a lot more small projects, some of that also relates to continuing to educate the public on when to pull permits, when permits are needed. The numbers definitely show that we’re making progress when it comes to educating on when and why,” said Needs.

SOD Center has continued with site development around the city and on potential expansions to the industrial park, noting that a geotechnical study and wetland delineation studies would be scheduled. As always SOD Center is also continuing to research and apply for grant funding to develop properties to be project ready, and Needs said that the Columbiana County land bank received a $200,000 remediation grant as part of the 10th round of funding for the Ohio Brownfield Redevelopment Program for 631 W. State St. She also said that an additional $200 million had been budgeted for the program in Ohio’s biennial budget, and that they would be seeking grant funding for work on another property in the city during the next round of funding.

Needs said that the state budget also raised the historic tax credit from 25% to 35% for projects in communities with a population of less than 300,000 people, noting that the “10% jump can be a significant mover for a project.”

The training center has also continued to offer re-skilling and up-skilling programming this year, which Needs said were “meant to adapt to the needs of employers in the region.” Thus far, 5,664 employees from 137 businesses have completed 21,252 training hours, and the center has offered 336 courses this year including 14 technical courses. Those technical courses have had 178 participants who have collectively earned 211 certifications.

Councilman and Committee Chairman Jake Gano said that with the volume of participants that the training center had one of the “shining centers of that kind of programming in the county or even multi-county area.”

Needs attributed the success to SOD Center’s consistent efforts to tailor its programming to the needs of local workforces, leading to that programming benefiting local businesses and employees.

“What the SOD training center does that’s different, where it’s hard to compare, is that 99% of those individuals come from the incumbent workforce. So those are employees that are being up-skilled or skilled for new positions in a company. In short-term training there aren’t other organizations necessarily doing that and doing it 100% of the time as their only focus,” said Needs. “We’re unique in that aspect, but that number for workforce development, I don’t know that there’s another organization we could be compared to in the region. We have other great workforce development entities, but they’re not just focused on that one area.”

As the meeting drew to a close, Gano re-emphasized how impressive the workforce development efforts of the training center were.

“Often you hear a lot about workforce development and it’s a lot of words. This is actually doing it. You look at the stat of 7,042 people in our daytime population are employed and you figure if you work with 5,600, that’s a pretty impressive feat for an organization like [SOD Center],” said Gano.