During an interview, McNair acknowledged that he has plenty of work to do at City Hall, starting with getting his arms around the department’s priorities and the varied needs of 17 city wards. For the next few weeks, though, he’ll be focused on ensuring a smooth transition in Ohio City, a neighborhood that has changed dramatically since he started working there in 2010.
“There are a lot of really exciting things happening in Ohio City, and some of them I’ve been involved in for a pretty long time,” he said, adding that it wasn’t an easy decision to leave just as the city-owned West Side Market is undergoing a management shift and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is preparing to break ground for stabilization of the Irishtown Bend hillside off West 25th Street.
But, he said, “I left the corporate world to get into the civic sector 13 years ago because I just wanted to make Cleveland a better place. … I consider this a once-in-a-lifetime chance to really roll your sleeves up and see if the things you’ve been working on for some time are really transferable to an entire city.”
The economic development department has a staff of 14 and six open positions. The city is vetting candidates for three of those jobs. Since June, the department has been led by interim director Terri Hamilton Brown, a well-known player in local community development circles.
Brown will stay on until McNair steps in, the city confirmed.
“I am pleased to welcome Tom to the team,” Bibb said in an emailed statement. “His smart-growth mindset, focus on people-oriented development and background in architecture make him an ideal fit for this role moving forward. We are also deeply grateful to Terri Hamilton Brown for stepping into the interim director role and for her hard work and dedication over the past two months.”
The department is deeply involved in initiatives including a nascent site-readiness fund, seeded with $50 million in federal pandemic-recovery money; the mayor’s ambitious vision for revitalizing the long-overlooked southeast side; planning for the future of the downtown lakefront and riverfront; and efforts to build a more robust pipeline of minority contractors.
Bradford Davy, the mayor’s chief of staff, said McNair’s to-do list involves creating a clear, consistent menu of incentives, with an eye on equitable growth; improving and modernizing city processes; and collaborating with partners like Team NEO and the Greater Cleveland Partnership on business attraction and retention.
“We will engage deeply with business owners and residents about the future of our city,” Davy said. “We will be direct and honest about that assessment. And we will be fair. But, most important, we will be focused on delivering world-class results.”
The city evaluated 27 applications for the director’s job and interviewed three finalists.
“Tom brings with him a deep subject-matter expertise and a mastery of large and small-scale economic development,” Davy said. “As a respected CDC director, Tom also has spent his career working in the community with a diverse set of stakeholders. … He’s also creative and unafraid to make tough decisions, but, I think, can do so while making sure that everyone feels heard and respected.”
McNair started his civic career as Ohio City Inc.’s director of economic development and planning, after stints at a design firm and furniture maker Steelcase. He has a bachelor’s degree in interior architecture and design from Ohio University.
He has been Ohio City Inc.’s executive director since 2014, leading an organization with a roughly $2.3 million annual budget and a full-time staff that hovers around 11 people. The community development corporation serves a neighborhood of stark contrasts, where high-end homes and glitzy apartment buildings are rising just a few blocks from vast public-housing complexes.
“What you learn is you really have to work with everyone, learn ways to communicate clearly and build coalitions,” said McNair, who played a pivotal role in negotiations that broke a years-long stalemate over the last holdout property on the Irishtown Bend hillside. A legal settlement inked earlier this year made way for the port’s stabilization work, which will lay the foundation for a 23-acre riverfront park.
“I always say Ohio City is a neighborhood with 10,000 people and 25,000 opinions,” he said. “You really need to listen to what everyone has to say and try to understand.”
During his time there, Ohio City Inc. has helped 100-plus businesses set up shop, work that McNair described as difficult but rewarding. More than $1 billion worth of residential development has poured into the neighborhood. That’s upwards of 2,400 new homes.
Through a collaboration with Tremont West Development Corp., Ohio City Inc. launched a community land trust to create and preserve affordable, for-sale housing. And with partners and sponsors, the organization built up a youth recreation league that serves more than 1,300 kids.
McNair, his wife and their two children live on the city’s East Side, in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood. He’s struck by the disparities between different parts of Cleveland and is passionate about the potential to reduce those imbalances and spread prosperity.
“If you look at what we’ve done in Ohio City, it has been all about building around assets and maximizing those assets,” he said. “And every neighborhood in Cleveland has assets to build around. … I think that is so critical to this work.”