Orrville, Ohio
Where progress and tradition meet
Published April 2014
Orrville was incorporated in 1864 and 2014 marks the sesquicentennial of the city. Special events will be held each month throughout the year to celebrate Orrville’s 150th birthday.
The city is an exceptional community with an industrious way of thinking. Part of Orrville’s vision is to “come together in an active partnership to foster academic, cultural and economic opportunities to cultivate a safe, vibrant and healthy community for our citizens and organizations.”
There are many recreational opportunities in the Orrville area including a bicycling club, radio-controlled and dirt track car racing, bowling, camping, swimming, tennis and golf. Adults can participate in more than 40 different social clubs and organizations.
Orrville has a five-site park system and residents have their choice of softball and baseball fields, tennis courts, playground equipment, and a new swimming pool with spacious bathhouse. They can also relax and enjoy the parks’ picnic and hall facilities or a concert and other entertainment activities at Rehm Performing Arts Pavilion.
Strong community values
One of the key foundations for Orrville’s successful industrial activities is in its exceptional educational system at all levels. The city is designated as a BEST (Building Excellent Schools for Today and the 21st Century) community and recently built three new schools on a campus setting.
Wayne County Schools Career Center (WCSCC), Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute, and the University of Akron’s Wayne College are all local institutions that focus on workforce development. WCSCC is one of Ohio’s 39 full-service centers able to design training programs that match local needs to local resources in order to increase the number of qualified applicants for job openings. Orrville’s Public Library has been ranked in the Top 5 of its size for several years.
Manufacturing is the primary labor market for the city, employing about 27,000 employees in Wayne County. Orrville is also home to the JM Smucker Co. Jerome Smucker began pressing locally grown apples into cider and apple butter in the 1890s and Orrville still remains the headquarters for the company. JLG, Quality Castings, Schantz Organ, Smith Dairy and Will-Burt also call Orrville home.
The Orrville Area Chamber of Commerce works to strengthen, promote and inspire the community through programs such as the Worthy Works Award, which acknowledges and recognizes the important contributions that nonprofit members make to their community.
The Office of Orrville Economic Development is committed to enhancing industrial and economic growth and works proactively with the State of Ohio to provide meaningful incentives and loans that help ensure successful business operations. In a major highlight, Wayne County was recently ranked the Best in the Nation among 576 micropolitans in economic development.
A leader in public power
Orrville Utilities provides quality services in a low cost and efficient manner. Orrville Utilities Power Plant has been the main source of power for the entire city and surrounding area since 1917. Orrville has a population of about 8,000 and serves more than 7,200 customers.
Committed to energy savings and electrical safety, Orrville Utilities is involved in the community and works to educate and assist residents and businesses. Orrville Utilities offers residential consumers a tool to perform a comprehensive online energy audit. Residents can complete the energy audit over time or in small steps and can be updated at any time. In wrapping up an energy efficiency program, participating customers will be saving more than $9.2 million in energy costs over the lifetime of their projects.
Orrville Utilities was named a Reliable Power Public Provider (RP3) program recipient by the American Public Power Association (APPA), receiving Gold level designation for 2012-13. RP3 is recognition for providing consumers with the highest degree of reliable and safe electric service.
As a member of AMP, Orrville participates in a number of AMP programs and projects that assist in providing reliable energy and other benefits to the community and its citizen-owners. Orrville also serves on the AMP Board of Trustees and Ohio Municipal Electric Association Board of Directors.
- AMP Fremont Energy Center, a natural gas combined cycle facility that provides energy and capacity
- Blue Creek Wind Farm, a wind farm in northwest Ohio that helps diversify the city’s portfolio of renewable resources providing power to members
- Meldahl/Greenup, which includes a portion of the run-of-the-river hydroelectric generating facility currently under construction at the Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River and a portion of the existing generating facility at the Greenup Dam, also on the Ohio River
- Municipal Energy Services Agency (MESA), which provides member communities a source of technical assistance including planning, design and engineering, field services and training assistance
- Mutual Aid, a network of municipal electric systems that assist each other when utility emergencies occur that are too widespread to be handled by the community alone
- Natural Gas Aggregation, provides natural gas aggregation services, which allow a group of consumers to combine their utility usage to form a buying group
- North Central AMP Service Group (NCASG), provides regional “ pooling” of member resources to reduce energy & transmission costs
- New York Power Authority (NYPA), providing hydroelectricity generated by plants on the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers
- Phase 1 Hydro, which includes the run-of-the-river generating facilities currently under construction at the Cannelton, Smithland and Willow Island dams on the Ohio River
- The Prairie State Energy Campus, in southern Illinois, is a 1600MW state-of-the-art supercritical mine-mouth plant and adjacent coal mine
For more information, please visit www.orrville.com and www.orrutilities.com.