About 30 minutes northeast of Columbus, a village of around 5,000 people is working to solve the labor shortage and create new technology.
The village of Johnstown wants to build a mobility hub and innovation center that will provide transportation for residents as well as an incubator space for mobility technology companies. The space, called the Mobility Factory Innovation Center, is planned for 200 E. Coshocton St., Jim Lenner, Johnstown’s village manager, told Columbus Business First.
It will serve as the lead institution of a network of similar hubs across rural areas in Central Ohio, Lenner said.
Lenner said the facility will increase residents' access to reliable transportation, which in turn could help solve the region's labor shortage.
“If someone can’t afford a car, or doesn’t have a car, they can do this,” Lenner said. “(We’re) trying to eliminate one of the barriers to successful employment.”
Johnstown is applying for a $75 million grant as part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge, a federal program designed to help communities “accelerate the economic recovery” from the pandemic and help build stronger local economies, according to its website.
The federal program is expected to invest in 20-30 regional communities across the country.
Similar hubs to Johnstown's are planned in Granville, Heath, Utica, Sunbury and Mount Vernon, according to the village’s pitch to the Build Back Better Regional Challenge. Hubs will provide multiple means of transportation, ranging from ride-sharing programs to buses in partnerships with nearby counties.
The hub will use a program designed by Etch, a Columbus-based geographic information system company, to design an open-source trip planning and optimization technology to show users how to route and pay for their trips.
This technology will allow anyone connected at the hub to get where they need to go, if possible using a variety of the transportation services, Lenner said.
“If you’re on a program that doesn’t go to a certain place, it’ll find one that does,” Lenner said. “(It’s like) Grand Central Station, but modern.”
The village is partnering with Advanced Mobility Solutions, a recently created wholly owned business unit of Technical Rubber Company, a Johnstown-based rubber manufacturer, to bring the project to life, Lenner said.
The site’s incubator and business accelerator space will provide opportunities for any type of mobility-based business to develop and test their product, AMS President Joe Cole said.
“The innovation center becomes a living laboratory for companies incubating and wanting to launch mobility technology,” Cole told Business First. "It can be a route-planning software, it can be drone-related, it can be anything, … if they’re developing a solution around mobility.”
Lenner said the site will have a test track for the companies to test their products. Once the village is comfortable with the products’ development, it will lay out a grid on the public-space system for testing.
Cole said the site hopes to provide educational opportunities in collaboration with higher education programs from Denison University and the Career And Technology Education Centers of Licking County.
The site could provide hands-on facilities to teach programs such as data analytics, app development and technical skills such as learning to work on electric motors and new types of vehicles, Cole said.
The Coshocton Street location is currently occupied by Tech: Tire and Wheel, another wholly owned business unit from Technical Rubber Company. If everything is approved, Tech will be moving to an expansion of another Technical Rubber Company site in Johnstown’s Commerce Center, Cole said.
Details on ownership have not been figured out yet, but Cole said there will be some type of a “favorable arrangement” with the village so the mobility hub and factory innovation center can be developed.
Lenner said the village hopes the venture will create between 100-150 jobs, but recognizes that space requirements for different industries leave the exact number uncertain.
Johnstown will submit the grant application later this month, Lenner said. If the application is approved, the village will receive $500,000 to further developer the idea before submitting the application for $75 million in March 2022.
Still, if the village's application is denied, Lenner and Johnstown Mayor Chip Dutcher said they will continue to search for a way to bring the project to life.
“If we’re not successful (in receiving the grant funding), we’re not stopping,” Lenner said. “We’re still going to try to make it work.”
