TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo has a vision and it is momentum, ConnecToledo President Paul Toth said.
The way to keep the momentum is to continue the city's growth.
"We've come off big projects like the convention center and the redevelopment of the Hilton Hotels and Fort Industry Square," Toth said.
Leaders at ConnecToledo say those projects were massive and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They believed the price was worth it.
"The residential population downtown is as strong as it's ever been," said Matt Rubin, the chairman for the downtown Toledo apartment district. "The vacancy is extremely low because people want to live downtown. They see the value, they love the neighborhood. We're the fastest-growing neighborhood in all of Toledo."
They say the last master plan was done about five years ago and many of the items have been accomplished.
Now, there are updates to the plan and it will act as a roadmap for the future of what can happen here.
"It's really been incredibly transformational. This is just the next step," Rubin said. "We're going to be laying out new goals and new initiatives that we want to accomplish over the next five years."
He says the Glass City continues to see a good amount of investment and that there is still a buzz with what's happening downtown.
Toth said a lot of the current focus is on some of the smaller projects.
"Start working on areas in the uptown area," Toth said. "The city was successful in getting large grant dollars for infrastructure. It's really just continuing to build one building block at a time."
Another one of those building blocks might just be plans to relocate and expand the downtown farmer's market, giving Toledoans and visitors even more options in the future.
ConnecToledo says there's a lot to be excited about over the next five years with no shortage of projects, the plans will just need the time and money to do it all.