According to Chrysler, Aetna has just recently launched another expansion and signed an extension on the lease of its facility, bringing about 300 new jobs to New Albany.
A lot can happen in 20 years. Take the New Albany International Business Park, for instance. According to Jennifer Chrysler, director of community development with the city of New Albany, there is certainly reason to celebrate the park’s 20th anniversary.
“Business park has grown from 1998 to over 11.5 million square feet and over 15,000 employees,” says Chrysler.
Why New Albany?
Why are businesses choosing to grow in New Albany? Aside from the community’s amenities and walkability, the business park provides companies the infrastructure they need to be successful.
“We used to look at shovel-ready sites like road, water and sewer, but in 2008 they really started to look at technology-ready sites,” says Chrysler, “which include fiber optics and dual-field electrics, in large part because of AEP and their partnership in the community.”
This has positioned New Albany and the business park as a strategic place to relocate, especially for businesses in the tech industry.
Not only is the business park's infrastructure master-[lanned for economic viability down the road, it's also designed to follow the same principles of road connectivity, leisure trails/walkability and clean transportation seen throughout the community.
A Master Plan
It’s no coincidence that the business park is so well equipped in terms of infrastructure, but the result of a master plan. According to Chrysler, the idea with a master planned community is to have balanced growth over time, ultimately creating economic viability.
One of the components in the master plan for the business park, and for New Albany as a whole, is road connectivity.
“From a public infrastructure standpoint, it’s about how we disperse traffic through the community,” says Chrysler. “It’s about how we are able to manage the increase in the size of our community through this multiple road network.”
The press conference photographed Tuesday, August 15, 2017 announcing the construction of a new Facebook Data Center.
Just as community members want to enjoy quality of life while traversing the streets of New Albany, employees at the business park want to be able to navigate the campus with ease and make use of local amenities.
The business park is currently home to 15,000 employees and there is still room to grow. According to Chrysler, the park has another 24 acres of approved land for further development in the future.
They’re able to get right onto the freeway and enjoy quality life on their commute,” says Chrysler. “It’s just not an hour to get onto the freeway and then another 20 minutes to get wherever you need to be.”
Leisure trails are another great example of how New Albany accommodates the needs of businesses and residents alike.
“Thirty-six miles of leisure trails extend throughout our community and connect through the village center and a lot of our different parks and amenities,” says Chrysler. “That extends throughout our business park as well.”
True to the community’s character, every single business in the park has a leisure trail out front. The recent Beech Road Interchange project, drastically improving the road’s infrastructure and adding cycle lanes, illustrates this commitment to pedestrian and vehicular traffic alike.
Cluster Theory
“We have an economic development component to our plan,” says Chrysler. “We subscribe to what’s called the cluster theory of economic development, which was developed by a professor at Harvard named Michael Porter.”
This theory states that businesses in the same industry tend to move near one another. If you consider the fact that similar industries would need similar resources and infrastructure, this makes sense. The business park is currently home to five clusters: Corporate Office and R&D, International Personal Care and Beauty, Information Technology/Mission Critical, High-Tech Manufacturing and Logistics, and Healthcare.
One example is the Personal Care and Beauty Campus, which is a supply chain vertical. There are 14 companies located there now, 11 of which are part of the supply chain.
“You have the guy who makes the bottle, fills the bottle, puts the label on the bottle, cap on the bottle and then ships it out to the store within seven days,” says Chrysler. “So that whole set of infrastructure was designed specifically for supply chain manufacturing, and companies have been able to do business better.”
Grouping like industries into clusters is a great example of how the New Albany International Business Park is attracting new businesses like Facebook.
Growing with New Albany
New Albany has a residential population of about 10,000. Factoring in business park employees, that number jumps to between 20,000 and 25,000. The balance between residential and commercial growth contributes to the success of the community and the park, attracting even more future investments.
“The New Albany Company obviously is the largest landowner in New Albany and has been our development partner since the beginning. We have such a proactive council and such a great city manager and staff,” says Chrysler, “but it’s really been a combination of the public and the private sector, and all of the different partners coming to the community at different points in the last 20 years to really help us grow the business park.”
The park's growth over the past two decades has been impacted not only by bringing in new tenants but also by allowing the existing businesses the chance to grow and expand here, like Bob Evans and Post Foods.
With another 2,400 acres of approved water and sewer plans, the business park has room for geographic growth in the next couple years. The future promises growth for not only the community and business park, but for the businesses that call it home, too.
“Bob Evans originally chose New Albany as its new home back in 2011. They opened up their new facilities, corporate headquarters in 2014 and the company has gone through just unbelievable transformation over the last couple years,” says Chrysler.
Bob Evans Foods, which is owned by Post Foods, split the restaurants and the food service divisions apart. Both of the new divisions call the New Albany Business Park home, and Post Foods just recently announced its intent to move in.
Though the infrastructure, existence of other businesses in the area and New Albany’s tight-knit community are major selling points for these businesses, the positives don’t stop there. Chrysler adds that the unique organizations in the community have been “icing on the cake” for the overall planning strategy as well as for economic development.
“The Heit Center is one of them, the Rose Run project that we’re getting ready to start construction on is another,” says Chrsyler. “All of the activity in the village center is yet another (and) the Rocky Fork Metro Park is another. These are just kind of additional benefits that I think add to that story of success and make (New Albany) a place workers want to locate.”
Jenny Wise is an associate editor. Feedback welcome at jwise@cityscenemediagroup.com.
