Kent’s Newest Corporate Addition Making Head...

There’s no better way to start off the work week than opening the newspaper to read the words FIRM EXPANSION and KENT used in the same sentence.  That’s how I started off my week last week and I’ve been smiling ever since.  I’m a pretty optimistic guy by nature and it doesn’t take much to keep my Irish eyes smiling so you can imagine the jig I was dancing in the office (behind closed doors) to read about the 35 new employees that Cambria has already hired with hopes of growing that number to 80 employees as they get the plant up to speed.  In City Manager circles we spell relief N-E-W J-O-B-S, so this story was music to my ears.

Quartz popularity drives Minn. firm’s Kent expansion
Countertop maker cites wealth of available employees as factor in locating plant here

By Dan Shingler, Crains Cleveland Business Magazine
4:30 am, August 4, 2008

Despite a national slowdown in new housing starts and sales of existing homes, a company that makes quartz countertops is expanding in Kent.

Cambria, a privately held company based in Eden Prairie, Minn., has opened a $4 million, 75,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in the town, said Peter Martin, the company’s director of marketing and core city sales.

The plant began production last month and will cut Cambria’s countertops so they can be distributed through affiliates across Ohio and in Western Pennsylvania, Mr. Martin said.

The company so far has hired 35 full-time employees, including 30 production workers, all of whom receive health care and 401(k) benefits, he said. Production workers are paid wages of $14 or more, depending on experience, he said.

Thus far, Cambria has secured relationships with 12 installation companies that sell and install its countertops. That’s enough work to keep the plant busy already, Mr. Martin said.

“They’re cutting about 12,000 square feet of Cambria (countertops) per month,” he said.

Mr. Martin said Cambria’s plans for the plant include increasing the number of employees to 80 and boosting production hours from one shift to three in the next few years. He said one reason the company chose Northeast Ohio for the new plant was because the area had a large number of potential workers who were good with machines and could be trained easily at a Cambria site in Indianapolis.

“We’ve had a lot of success finding good, quality employees in the area,” Mr. Martin said.

The company makes its countertops by taking quartz from mines in Quebec and then forming it into solid slabs with the aid of a binding resin. The finished product is 93% quartz and 7% resin. It can be colored into nearly any shade or hue, he said.

Cambria had sales last year of about $100 million. It has been able to continue growing in the face of the nation’s housing crisis, in part, because it’s gaining share in the market for countertop surfaces, Mr. Martin. The company, which does not make public its detailed financial information, expects revenues to rise by 5% to 10% this year, he said.

“That’s slower than in previous years, but we’re certainly still seeing growth,” Mr. Martin said. “One reason is that the popularity of quartz is still on the rise.”

A vote for consistency
Cambria countertops sell for about $70 per square foot. On a price basis, that’s comparable with mid- to high-grade granite countertops, said Abigail Root, a designer at Beachcliff Cabinet and Design in Rocky River.

Ms. Root said, based on her observations, that quartz is gaining some market share, particularly against its top competitor, granite.

“They’re becoming a little more popular, because of the consistency of color,” Ms. Root said.

Unlike granite, quartz countertops have consistent patterns, Ms. Root said, so there are no surprises when an actual slab of quartz countertop shows up at a consumer’s home for installation. She said many customers also prefer quartz because it is nonporous and does not requiring sealing, like granite does, and because the number of available colors is greater with quartz.

With high-end kitchens, though, some other surfaces are gaining even more popularity, said Carmel Conlin, co-owner of Conlin Design & Workshop in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.

More of Mr. Conlin’s customers are opting for countertops made of concrete, which she said is probably the surface that’s registering the biggest gains in popularity among consumers building luxury kitchens.

Nonetheless, Mr. Martin said Cambria is counting on continued growth in its market share and also hopes to see business increase further when the housing market stabilizes.

Toward that end, the company has been advertising heavily in the Cleveland area.

It also is partnering with the Cleveland Indians for promotions at Progressive Field, where it has installed countertops in the women’s restrooms and on the main concourse behind home plate.

New Sheetz Coming To Kent?...

Kent Fire & EMS Employees Hard At Work...

In a service industry like Fire and Emergency Medical Services the numbers only tell part of the story.  You simply can not put a value on saving the life of a loved one or the quiet confidence that paramedics offer to reassure family members that the person they care so much about is in good hands.  You really can’t so we don’t even try, but we do keep track on how many calls we run and where they are coming from.  Those are important indicators that we use to manage the performance of our emergency services.  The Fire Chief has provided a short summary of calls comparing 2006, 2007 and 2008.

When you read through the Chief’s numbers you’ll see that we are serving calls beyond the Kent boundaries, e.g., Franklin Township and Sugarbush.  Our contract service area includes about 5,400 people and it is provided on a cost-reimbursement basis with the township so it is a break-even arrangement for the city.

As professional fire and emergency medical services have become more and more sophisticated, with more and more advanced life support technology, it increasingly makes sense to pool resources together which is exactly what we’ve been doing in Fire and EMS for years.  People like to say government’s don’t like to work together but as you can see here that’s certainly not the case for our Fire and EMS.

If you do a little back of the envelope math you can see that we get between 300 and 350 calls a month and roughly 70 to 75% of those are medical services calls.  Emergency medical services are clearly the core of our service which means your Fire and EMS employees today have to have a much higher degree of medical and health care knowledge than ever before.  Keeping those medical skills and knowledge current is a challenge and requires constant training and re-training.  Yet with the numbers of calls up as high as they are this year the department is hard pressed to take people off line for training.  It’s a constant struggle.

Overall the City gets about 24,000 calls for help a year and some 20,000 of those are Police related with the remaining 4,000 routed over to Fire & EMS. That means that Kent Fire & EMS employees are running about 110 calls per employee a year while Stow has been running roughly 60 calls per employee, Aurora 65, and Cuyahoga Falls 90.  The Kent crews are a hard-working bunch and we’re all better because of it.

Love Those Kent Testimonials...

It’s great to have big dreams and bid ideas working their way through the downtown revitalization pipeline but it’s not homeruns that win the most games — it’s all the little things we do every day that add up to something special. That’s one of Kent’s most distinguishing characteristics — we’ve got big ideas and a big university but it’s still packaged in a small town where the living is easy. Kent’s a place where how you treat somebody can still make a difference.  That may sound old fashioned but that personal touch in Kent isn’t lost on visitors and I was delighted to receive an unsolicited testimonial this weekend from an out of towner who had a great experience visiting us. I wish I knew who our unnamed Kent ambassador was but somehow it’s almost better not knowing as the person could be any of us and all of us which is exactly right.

Dave,

Recently my wife and I were visiting Kent because our daughter was starting her first year at Kent State. We had some time so my wife and I decided to visit downtown Kent and get some breakfast and look around. When we were looking for a place to have breakfast, a man who said he was a life long resident of Kent stopped to ask us if we needed help finding something. When we told him we were looking for a place to eat breakfast, he gave us directions to several places and gave us highlights of each places menu.

It was very apparent that he was enthusiastic about the city of Kent and made feel very welcome. I’m sorry that I did get his name, but it says a lot about a city when it’s residents are such good ambassadors.

We enjoyed a good breakfast, a walk around the River Front Park, and the rest of the downtown.

Ohio Makes Smart Traveler Top 5 Fall Vacation List...

With the arrival of school bus assignments in the mail and Roosevelt’s football team standing at 1-0 already, it would seem that we are in the midst of another seasonal transition. I must admit that it is with some sadness that I see signs of summer coming to a close but if it has to come to an end then it’s great to see our home state get national coverage for being one of the best places in the country for fall vacations in USA Today last week. With abundant national, state and local parks in our region alone we don’t have to wait for vacation time, we get to live it every day. And I can’t think of a better or more appropriate place than Kent, the original tree city, to take in the sights, sounds and smells of autumn.  The choice we have all made in selecting Kent as our home has given us a front row seat to some of the most spectacular fruit mother nature produces all within walking distance.

By Christine Sarkis, SmarterTravel.com

After a summer of new airline fees, high fuel costs, and tight budgets, will fall bring better deals for travelers in search of a bargain? Choose your destinations wisely and you’ll find that this fall really is a good time to travel, even if you don’t have much to spend.

#3.  Ohio

Innkeepers in New Hampshire and Vermont may swear otherwise, but New England isn’t the only place to marvel at impressive fall foliage displays. Even better, leaf peeping in other parts of the country can be far more affordable as well. Ohio, for instance, is dotted with state parks offering vivid autumn colors. And many are within an easy drive of major cities and airports, making the trip even more affordable.

Comparing the cost of a simple weekend getaway puts the savings in perspective. At the Shire Riverview Motel in Woodstock, Vermont, a standard room runs about $180 on weekends, putting the cost of a two-night weekend getaway at $360. Compare that to a two-night weekend package at the Burr Oak State Park Resort, located about an hour-and-a-half drive from Columbus. The Buckeye Package includes two nights’ accommodations, daily breakfast, dinner for two, and a $25 gift certificate for $279. Ohio State Parks has a rate comparison chart for lodges around the state.

You can find dozens more discounts and specials on accommodations, dining, and attractions at the Discover Ohio website. When you’re ready to book, check for fall airfare sales from Southwest and other airlines serving Columbus, Cleveland, and other Ohio airports.

If you’re looking for great stuff to do this Fall you don’t have to look far.  Portage County recently came out with a great guide call the Portage 100 that lists 100 of the county’s favorite things to do in our own backyard.  Here’s a sampling:

There’s no place like home….

The Trash-Haul Free-For-All...

Over the last 5 years the City has initiated many productivity and efficiency improvements to help curtail the financial crunch that we’ve been facing.  Those efforts have worked to the tune of about $1 million dollars in workforce reductions and another million in materials and supplies.  Based on that success we got interested in looking at what we could do to improve trash collection to save residents’ money and raise the quality of service at the same time.

The logic isn’t all that complicated — in the trash collection business density of customers is the key driver of financial success.  Drive time is non-revenue producing, it’s dead time, and with gas prices as high as they’ve been drive time is becoming very expensive so the goal is to maximize revenue producing activities (picking up the trash) and minimize non-revenue time.

Mathematically the haulers want to see a rising ratio of collections or revenues earned per mile.  Understanding the importance of that ratio, the City did some homework and saw an opportunity for us to dramatically improve the revenue mile numbers by bidding trash service citywide.  That’s a game changing sort of improvement and based on what we saw in other cities (and even a Kent homeowner association reports saving 25% by bidding just their neighborhood), that kind of change has the ability to save resident’s money and hopefully improve service through the leverage of volume of accounts.

I shared the powerpoint presentation that the staff had prepared in a blog post a couple of weeks ago Blog Post that details the pro’s and con’s but I thought I would also follow up with a copy of the draft bid specification for anyone that enjoys the legal-ease of contract language.  Here’s the Draft Bid.

The terms of the bid are specifically broad in order to allow residents the opportunity to maintain the same type of service they currently receive just at a more beneficial rate.  I know that trash service is like an extended member of the family and once you’ve found one you like you never let them go but we really see significant cost and service benefits in moving from a trash haul free-for-all to managed service, otherwise we wouldn’t even be asking to consider this change.

By moving forward with an exclusive franchise agreement for each of the 4 quadrants of the city, we fully expect to see meaningful savings for trash customers in Kent through improved routing.  Fewer trucks on our streets mean less wear and tear on streets and curbs, better safety, less noise and truck traffic in neighborhoods which also means less potential for property damage or accidents, and even less emissions that we breathe in at our homes which in today’s vernacular means a smaller carbon footprint for Kent.

Some folks have expressed concerns over losing their right to choose their own trash hauler.  I think freedom of choice is a great thing but the reality is there are costs to be paid for freedom of choice and we decided long ago that for some areas, like Police and Fire, we’re willing to concede our right to choose to ensure a safer, better community.  Do we all want to hire our own police security, or handle the fire at our own house, probably not.

It appears that in general, most people agree to keep these a “public” service, to pool our funds and have the best equipment and people we can afford for these services rather than have each person hire there own fireman and policeman — and maybe even trashman.

Here’s a short example of how the transition process worked recently in another Ohio city:

Marietta Ohio
City of Marietta chooses new waste management provider

Adding Kent to the List of Bike Trail Towns...

Building Kent Trails...

The hammering sound you hear in downtown Kent may be from the Phoenix Project’s $6 million renovation on Main Street or you might be hearing the sound of the boardwalk that is being built as part of the extension of the bike trail from the Kent border down by the Middlebury Road bridge along the river back up to Fred Fuller Park.  Or it might be the construction of the bike trail being built on the north end of downtown from the Crain Avenue bridge through the old rail yards up to the Kent border with the Franklin township.  I could tell you all about it but in the spirit of verbal conservation I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Middlebury Road to Fred Fuller Segment

The Trail begins at Middlebury Road where the Cuyahoga River crosses the road.

Summit County Metroparks has proposed extending the trail toward Tallmadge and into Downtown Akron by 2012 using the old rail corridor at the intersection of Middlebury and SR 261.

The newly paved trail follows the old P&O Canal along an old roadway that was constructed inside the canal.  A small retaining wall was constructed in this area to minimize impact on the adjacent wetlands.

Sixty five foot steel piling have been driven on each side of the river for the bridge abutments.

The trail continues over top of the Plum Creek Aqueduct that was constructed in 1840. Plum Creek passes through this structure on its way to the Cuyahoga.

After crossing on the North side of the river the trail will pass under the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad

The project will terminate in Fred Fuller Park.  The estimated completion date is November 15th.

The city has been awarded additional funding ($700,000) in 2012 to continue the trail to Tannery Park.

Crain Avenue Segment

•Crain Avenue Segment is being funded in part by a Clean Ohio Trails Fund grant for $163,000.

After approximately 1/3 of a mile out of downtown Kent the trail branches off from the tracks around the perimeter of the old Atlantic & Great Western Rail Yard.

The trail continues with views of the Cuyahoga River and Standing Rock that will be highlighted with interpretive signage next year. The trail continues along side remnants of the P & O Canal again.

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The project terminates at the Emergency Access Drive in the River Bend Subdivision.

Portage Park District will be constructing the trail from this point to Lake Rockwell Road. Their project is currently out for bids and is scheduled for completion this fall.

A trailhead has been constructed at Lake Rockwell Road adjacent to Beckwith’s Orchard. •Crain Avenue is approximately 2 miles to the east and from this point the trail is constructed through Towner’s Woods and into the city of Ravenna’s Chestnut Hills Park.

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So get your bike chains lubed-up, you’ll soon be able to do some fun trail rides around Kent just in time to take in the fall foliage.

In Traffic Safety Everyone Counts...

Traffic safety exists at that point where the big we meets the little me.  Every time we get in a car we put ourselves in the care of all the other driver’s around us.  We do it so often we don’t think about it — but we should because whether we acknowledge it or not we are relying on the other driver’s to not run the red light or cross the center line as they go cruising on by.  We are all in this traffic thing together.  The me comes into play because the big we is nothing more than all us little me’s.  There are things I need to do as I drive to honor that unwritten compact that binds the big we.  All us little me’s count, both as drivers and passengers, and we can’t ever forget that because even the loss of the littlest me is a tragedy.

The Public Service Department plays an integral part of Chief Peach’s traffic safety team that brings together expertise in education, engineering and enforcement of traffic safety practices. Given the human consequences from accidents, traffic safety is a top priority for both the Police and Public Service.

Everything we do as a City – from filling potholes, to maintaining traffic signals, repairing signs and repainting street markings — is done to ensure the safety of motorists and pedestrians that use City streets. We continue to perform these routine functions but we’re also trying to become more aggressive to stay out in front of accident trends, and with the addition of a Traffic Engineer on our staff we’ve been able to re-dedicate resources towards more traffic education and engineering safety measures.

The basic challenge before our traffic safety team is to identify trouble spots within the City’s road network and to apply proven traffic safety measures in order to reduce risk and minimize the chances for driver confusion or error that could contribute to accidents. To meet that challenge, Traffic Engineering monitors traffic patterns, reviews accident records and works closely with the Police and citizens to better understand traffic operations at “the street level” and discern the nuances of driver behaviors.

In the world of traffic safety, predictability and consistency are critical to protecting motorists and roadway changes of any kind, even improvements, have to be done cautiously and incrementally in order to prevent creating more uncertainty and potentially making the problem worse. As a result, Traffic Engineering has to be extremely thorough in its research and evaluation, as well as conservative in its approach to implementing change — all of which takes time.

When it comes to driver safety I really believe that you are truly either part of the solution or part of the problem; there is no middle ground. Each of us, when we get behind the steering wheel, have a choice to honor safety or disregard it. I don’t think that there’s any such thing as a partially safe driver because there is no such thing as a partial fatality and all it takes is one poor choice to take a life. Just like when we got our license for the first time, all of us have to recommit to safety every time we turn the key. Driver safety is a full time job.

Since every good effort needs a title I informally refer to this as the “Everyone Counts” campaign. The premise behind “Everyone Counts” is that every life is important — even 1 fatality is one too many — and every person can contribute to the cause by choosing to drive safer every time out.

We all have a stake in traffic safety and we all have an equal responsibility to drive safe. In a way, the Everyone Counts message attempts to personalize traffic safety back to each of us individually because in reality safe driving depends upon each of us to share the road wisely and make decisions that not only protect ourselves but also the people in the cars all around us.

We depend upon each other to be safe. Driving becomes very personal whenever someone we care about is in an accident, so in the spirit of an ounce of prevention is worth a lifetime of cure — we’re just trying to keep that thought in people’s mind before tragedy strikes. The phrase Everyone Counts seemed to capture the essence of both the problem and the solution.

Tip#1 A yellow light is not an invitation to speed up.
A yellow light means STOP. You’re only allowed to drive through a yellow light if you are already in the intersection or so close to the intersection that stopping would be hazardous. The yellow light is not an indication for a driver to speed up in an attempt to beat the red light. Go for the brakes, not the accelerator.

In Case You Ever Wondered: Why No Crosswalk on the...