Ohio City Inc.'s Tom McNair to Head City's Department of Economic Development

Tom McNair, the director of Ohio City Incorporated for the past 13 years, will take his talents to City Hall this September, when he leads the Department of Economic Development. Credit: Ohio City Inc.

After a little more than 13 years boosting Ohio City’s vibrancy via its CDC, Ohio City Inc., director Tom McNair is set to work the economic engine on a much larger scale. On Wednesday, Mayor Bibb announced McNair would be the city’s next director of economic development.

McNair’s hiring trails a somewhat chaotic period in the department. Ever since Bibb fired Tessa Jackson in June—for seemingly not being pro-business enough—the department of 20 has been working under interim director Terri Hamilton Brown. Jackson, meanwhile, has been posting on X about her time with the city and what she views as misconceptions about her era.

In a release, Bibb hinted at McNair’s penchant for the walkable and his amenability to the 15-minute city, one of the mayor’s most championed planning ideas.

“I am pleased to welcome Tom to the team,” Bibb said. “His smart growth mindset and focus on people-oriented development make him an ideal fit for this role moving forward.”

And ideal may be right.

Just yesterday, City Council approved City Planning’s pitch to remove parking minimums surrounding transit lines, replacing them with non-car-oriented build incentives. Having someone like McNair, who was supposedly carless for 15 years in Shaker Square, on board could help the Bibb administration’s intent of ramping up mixed-us near the rapid and major bus lines.

It’s definitely McNair’s interest. Before he helped grow Ohio City into one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city, McNair cut his teeth in ground-level disciplines. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he helped design Bob Evans restaurants or Sealy Mattress stores at a firm in Akron. He worked as an architectural manager for furniture-builder Steelcase, then went on to own his own company, Crooked River Project Management, in 2010.

But it was at Ohio City Incorporated, the neighborhood’s community development corporation, where McNair gained his most worthwhile recognition.

Along with former councilman Joe Cimperman, restaurateur Sam McNulty, Hingetown forefathers Graham Veysey and Marika Shioiri-Clark, and Frank Jackson’s economic department, McNair helped turned a dusty relic of hardscape—namely West 25th St.—into one of the most occupied retail districts in the city.

In 2010, for example, Ohio City had a 39 percent retail vacancy. Today, after numerous stratagems and several retail plans. Now, it is “less than 2 percent vacant,” McNair told Scene.

“There’s just a reality that no matter who comes into roles like this, you’re never going to be able to do stuff on your own,” McNair said. “You have to build partnerships and coalitions. You have to work with the communities that are there.”

The onus will be on McNair to transfer the same energy and mentality from a neighborhood of 10,000 to a city of nearly 370,000.

It’s possible, McNair said, he could leverage in Downtown one of his greatest growth ideas: a small business competition, in 2012, that offered startup dollars to six businesses who had good ideas for West 25th. Sixty applicants submitted. The next year, those “six chronically-vacant” storefronts were filled with shops—Joy Machines Bike Shop, Urban Orchid, Campbell’s Popcorn and Soho Chicken + Whiskey, along with two others.

Like Downtown Cleveland Inc.’s “Re-imagining Cleveland” plan released in June, McNair’s approach to filling empty lots or vacant storefronts could be amenable to DCI chief Michael Deemer’s. McNair’s option to tap the Riddle Company in 2019 to figure out major retail needs might be something repeated in other neighborhoods begging for like growth. Including southeast side neighborhoods, like Central and Slavic Village, which have long lacked the same development triumphs found near West 25th.

Whatever McNair strives to greenlight, he said cross-department communication is paramount: with City Planning, with the Department of Community Development. The recent emphasis of transit-oriented development signifies that McNair’s hungry is also something he’s excited to tackle and expand.

“I’m a firm believer in the fact that, if you have density built up and good transit connections,” McNair told Scene, “that’s good for business.”

McNair will officially start September 25th.