Friday Meeting July 12, 2013
Welcome to a brand new Rotary year!
This Friday marks the beginning of our 35th year, led this year by President Rob Fox. There are lots of opportunities for service and fellowship on the horizon for our club, so hold on and enjoy the ride!
Speaking at our meeting this week is Wade Gottschalk, Executive Director at the Wood County Economic Development Commission. We all know Wood County is a great place to work and live...check out this info from the agency:"The Best of Both Worlds” is the way a recently arrived executive described Wood County, Ohio. 'A Virtual Metropolitan Area' is how we were labeled by a logistics professional. This rural, friendly, and safe community has all the benefits normally associated with those traits—low cost of living, excellent schools, productive workforce, and low crime rate. But our locational and transportation advantages offer entrée into the global marketplace at a magnitude one would only expect to find in metro areas devoid of these benefits.
Served by America's longest east-west Interstate highways (80/90), and her longest north-south Interstate (75), Wood County's 'virtual metropolitan area'; contains a population of 18 million within a 2 hour drive radius, with two-thirds of the North American consuming market within a one day truck drive. Add an international airport(DTW) within an hour’s drive featuring daily non-stops to Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt plus a state-of-the art intermodal freight facility in Wood County taking double-stacked container freight to world markets via east and west coast ports and it becomes clear how this county with a real population of 127,000 has attracted $3 billion of private sector investment in recent years.
See you at the meeting on Friday!