County to lease site near downtown for `one-stop' job shop

10/29/2003

Lucas County commissioners voted yesterday to place a “one-stop shop” to bring job seekers and employers together in a building at Monroe and 14th streets in downtown Toledo.

The commissioners will lease a 24,000-square-foot building that KeyBank had leased at 1301 Monroe.

The building will house a center that is a key component of the county's Workforce Investment plan. Workforce Investment is a federal job-training and placement program implemented on the state and local level.

The commissioners have talked for at least three years about setting up a “one-stop shop” to bring job seekers together with employers, job trainers, and public-assistance agencies.

The lease for the Monroe Street building will cost the county and other partners in the job program about $246,000 a year for five years. Edward Ciecka, the county's administrator, said the county is leasing the building from the Jim White Agency Co.

Commissioners chose the Monroe Street site over the former Riverside Hospital complex at 1600 North Superior St. The decision was close, but the Monroe Street site will cost $87,600 less a year and had the recommendation of the county's Workforce Policy Board, county administrators, and agencies that might work out of the building, said Commissioner Maggie Thurber.

Harry Barlos, president of the board of commissioners, said the Monroe Street site appealed to him because it's only a few miles from the Lucas County Job and Family Services building on Monroe Street, and Riverside's main entrance isn't visible from Summit Street.

“It allows us to show that this is a business, and we're in the business of workforce development,” Mr. Barlos said.

Mr. Ciecka said he hopes the center will be open within 100 days.