Dave Burtch of the Paulding County CoRP (Community Reviving Paulding) and CIC (Community Improvement Corp) invited the community back to the Masonic Lodge Building to introduce major changes to the Village of Paulding. CIC along with Paulding County Economic Development has been working furiously to fill empty buildings that are on the square of Paulding.
There was more than one big announcement on this day. The obvious suspect was the Union Bank but more than that was announced.
Burtch started off the event on Thursday, January 14 by introducing the owners of the building to the left on East Perry is now going to house a business called “Grounded” It will be a coffee shop with custom made baked goods, according to new owners, Mitch and Ashley Maibach, They were in Fort Wayne and decided to come back to start something in Paulding! It was fantastic to see these young people starting something new!
The Union Bank CEO, Brian Young, began to talk about his history with the bank. The Union Bank Paulding branch opened in 2020 at the Business Innovation Center. The time has now come to expand in the village. Tim Copsey from the Paulding County Economic Development worked with Brian to find a great location on the square and that just happened to be the old Masonic building on the corner of Main and Perry Streets. Brian stated they were excited to take on a project like this – taking an old building and bringing it up to a modern standard while keeping its vintage esthetics.
Tim Copsey spoke about developing a new plan to sell commercial real estate. He has been working with six realtors that would work with him to keep Paulding County commercial property easily available on this new site. in the 12 months that Tim has been in the position of Economic Development Director they have sold 17 of these listings. This success has been phenomenal and Dave Burch praised his efforts for this.
Tim has all kinds of programs setup for anyone that would like to start a new business and he can provide help.
Burtch closed the meeting with a question and answer session to try and bring new ideas for bringing business into the county.
