It was his role ‘to sell Butler County’: Man’s vision helped transform local economy

His directive was simple and transformational. The commissioners gave him a blank piece of paper and told him to get to work. That was his dream job.

“I love to develop,” said the Cincinnati-area native. “I like to take raw ground and figure out how to plan for it and then bring the investment in. That’s what I wanted to do.”

Butler County saw a lot of residential growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The county was not heavy into the business and industrial sites like it is today, said Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon, who had a stint on the commission back in the 1980s.

“The county wasn’t geared for that, nobody was geared for that really,” said Dixon. “We were looking into the future a little more and this was what we need, and if we want to keep our taxes low, we’re going to have to have revenue from somewhere.”

Robinson worked with the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, having built that relationship from his previous time with the city of Cincinnati. The chamber worked to attract businesses to the region and Robinson’s role was to sell Butler County. That led to Pierre Foods (later known as Advance Pierre), Pacific Manufacturing and Salvagnini coming in.

Credit: Nick Graham

Credit: Nick Graham

Robinson and the communities around Butler County worked to land some businesses that not only laid the foundation of transformational change economically. Pacific Manufacturing in Fairfield and Salvagnini in Hamilton are still around today.

Some needed dirt to build, and others needed a building to redevelop, but they key to landing all of the businesses, and keeping them around besides the tax breaks and incentives, is to “make them feel wanted,” he said. “I learned to love these companies.”

They tried to keep and save businesses, too, but the one they couldn’t save was Fisher Body. They tried to come up with a strategy, and even called in U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum to help, but there was nothing they could do from losing some 2,200 jobs and the largest tax base for Fairfield.

Robinson remembers being told by a company executive, “’Son, this decision was made five years ago.’”

Though there were many sleepless nights from economic development professionals and elected officials in Fairfield and Butler County, the city recovered, first with Pacific Manufacturing, which has expanded multiple times since opening the Seward Road plant in the early 1990s.

Today, Butler County is thriving, both in residential growth — it’s now the seventh largest county in the state — and economically, with businesses expanding and growing every year. There are more than 390,000 residents in the county, and the average Butler County job pays an average of $74,300 a year, according to the county.

Dixon attributes the work done by Robinson and other county and city leaders nearly two generations ago for laying the foundation. While the formula of how Butler County grew can be figured out with the advantage of hindsight, the vision back then wasn’t as clear though most of the decisions appeared to have been the right ones.

“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good,” Dixon said. “We needed jobs here, we needed people here, and we didn’t have any services for them as far as shopping or jobs and those sorts of things.”

That was Robinson’s job, to develop a plan and create something to make the county sustainable in the future. Robinson is glad to see his work has provided a lasting legacy, helping Butler County prosper.

“It’s wonderful to have the rooftops,” he said of Butler County’s residential base. “But if you do not have industry, all the costs for the schools, infrastructure, emergency services and all the supports goes onto the backs of the people under those rooftops.”

Robinson and his wife, Melissa, took that same Butler County playbook — Melissa’s culinary expertise, his economic development knowledge, and a little luck — and created a successful chocolate business. And almost a decade later, he’s selling his Bourbon Bonbons everywhere. The recipe for his bourbon ball, which he calls a bonbon, is a century old and from his wife’s family, and he partners with the abundant bourbon distilleries in and around Lexington.

“We really created a mystique around our product,” he said. “We tried to differentiate ourselves by creating a real gourmet entry into the market, and that got us the attention from some of the distillers in the market.”