(Editor’s Note: From time to time, I am taking a look at Toledo, Ohio, an aging industrial city which has many of the problems of Detroit on a smaller scale; though there are differences, there is plenty that is relevant to both places, as well as other Midwestern cities. )
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TOLEDO – Nearly four months ago, I wrote a column which asked “what would it take to get Toledo moving again — and why has the city slowly declined for decades?”
I am doing research for a book on that topic, and I invited reader response, and got lots of it, ranging from the sensible to the silly. But I thought some of the most thoughtful observations came from Laura Koprowski, a fourth-generation native Toledoan who moved to Columbus in 1996 and came back two years ago.
Last fall, she became CEO of TARTA, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority. Koprowski, who was born in 1971, the same year TARTA was created, has had a long career in regional government and transportation, and is all about trying to envision a better future and finding ways to make it happen.
Rather than dwelling on mistakes of the past, she prefers to see the glass more than half full — and thinks Toledoans all ought to be celebrating what they have and trying to make things even better:
“I’ve retitled your column in my mind,” she wrote me. “I think the even better title would be: “Toledo is Great: So, where do we go from here?” Intrigued, I asked her to sit down with me and expand on her ideas and tell me more about how she saw TARTA’s future. She told me that a big part of what Toledo badly needs was self-esteem.
“We should have pride and confidence in ourselves!” she said. “We have the number one park system in the country, a world-class art museum, and our location boasts access to nearly half of the U.S. and Canadian industrial markets within a one-day drive.”
Today, there’s a strong tendency to see Columbus, now Ohio’s largest city, as the most vibrant and dynamic place in the state. But it wasn’t always so. Koprowski, who was an executive with a number of transportation agencies in Columbus, said that when she first arrived in Ohio’s capital, self-esteem there was pretty low.
Back in the 90s, she was cautioned to always include “Ohio” when she mentioned the city, so people wouldn’t confuse it with Columbus, Georgia. “Our airport sold T-shirts saying that our favorite sport was cow-tipping, and Columbus had a suburb called Grove City which was better known as Grovetucky.”
Then, there was a dramatic mind-shift, she said, and a determination to believe “that Columbus was great and had a bright future. From politicians to business leaders to young professionals like myself at the time, we all changed our language and description about Columbus to be optimistic, innovative to reflect that if we didn’t believe in ourselves … who else will?”
Soon, the airport was fighting successfully to have the cow-tipping shirts removed from the store. Columbus started getting noticed. “Fast forward 26 years, and Intel is going to invest billions ($100 billion, in fact) in the former ‘Cowtown’ of Ohio!”
Koprowski thinks there is no reason why a similar turnabout can’t happen in Toledo. Like many people, she only really came to understand her native city after living elsewhere for a while.
And she believes there’s no reason that Toledo can’t undergo an equally great transformation. That, in fact, is part of why she left a good job as executive director of the Ohio Public Transit Association to come home to be a part of remaking and reforming TARTA.
She arrived as head of communications for the bus service, and within a year and a half was its CEO, where she is busily trying to make the bus system flexible and relevant to the modern age and provide better service to its core clientele, those of limited income and options who depend on buses to get everywhere.
You sense that she sees her job as a creative challenge — “but it isn’t just me,” she said. “There is dynamic new leadership at a number of agencies. Something good is happening.”
But more needs to happen, and Toledoans need to believe in and sell their strengths, she said. One big one is the cost of living. “I’ve met people who have left the west coast because they were making $200,000 and were in a two-bedroom apartment.”
“I know a woman who took a practically 50 percent pay cut to move to Toledo, and feels financially secure and has a home.”
Koprowski still has a home in Columbus and a commuter marriage; her husband is staying there just until their youngest son finishes high school, when he will join her. “I am a downtown Toledo area resident, and it is fantastic!” she wrote to me.
She believes everyone needs to “aggressively tell the story of the positive assets and momentum of metro Toledo any chance we get.” She firmly believes that how a city sees and talks about itself is a big part of successfully appealing to people and investors.
“I’m continually surprised how much there is to do in Toledo, even during a pandemic,” she said. Then she mused, “I think there are a lot of people who know this region is a gem, and are afraid of proclaiming its benefits because too many people will move here.”
That was the one thing she said that I found hard to believe. But if it were true — wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem for Toledo, or any aging industrial city in the Midwest, to have?
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
