Columbus Monthly / November 2011 / Dublin: Business

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Dublin: Business

An intelligent community

 

It was Frosty parfaits all around on   Aug. 4, 2011, as Wendy’s announced its return to Dublin during a ceremony at the company’s soon-to-be-renovated headquarters on Dave Thomas Boulevard. “This is an exciting day for Wendy’s,” said then-president and chief executive officer Roland Smith as he raised a parfait with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Dublin Mayor Timothy Lecklider.

It was an equally exciting day for Dublin, a win for the city’s economic development team that will mean more jobs and increased tax revenues. It solidified the city as a business-friendly, job-producing powerhouse poised for even more growth in the coming years.

“This is huge,” says Lecklider. “This means we’ll retain 400 jobs in Dublin that were in play to move elsewhere and perhaps even out of the state, and will add another 50 jobs.”

The Wendy’s win is just one of the city’s business-related achievements in recent months. And Dublin officials are proactively planning to sustain this success with several large projects: the 1,100-acre Bridge Street Corridor, which will bring an urban touch to the suburb and create a walkable center in the heart of the city; the development of Innovation Park, a 200-acre business campus on the western edge of the city; the completion of the Emerald Parkway business corridor, and a revamping of the city’s planning and zoning codes to speed up the approval process.

“There’s no question our city council and the people in the development office have had a vision and will continue to be forward thinking,” says Margery Amorose, executive director of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.

 

Once upon a time

Dublin wasn’t always a job-producing machine. Amorose remembers the days when the area was a rural community filled with sprawling farms and chip-and-seal roads. New businesses and modern office complexes were something that happened down the road, in Columbus. “And then several things occurred that changed everything,” says Amorose, who has been with the Chamber of Commerce so long—36 years—its building is named after her.

These developments in the 1970s, she says, included the construction of I-270, with two all-important Dublin exits; Ashland Inc., a specialty chemical company, building and expanding its headquarters; and Jack Nicklaus designing Muirfield Village Golf Club, which put Dublin on the map with the creation of the annual Memorial Tournament, still hosted each year by the Hall of Fame golfer.

“And Muirfield led to the first real housing development,” Amorose says of the upscale homes that now surround the world-class golf course.

Today, due in large part to those developments and several others in more recent years, Dublin is filled with offices, sprawling business campuses and wide, well-paved roads—and is one of Central Ohio’s premier business hubs, with around 3,000 businesses and 60,000 employees. This strong corporate base provided income tax revenue of $68.8 million in 2010, which represented 74 percent of the city’s total operating revenue. This pays for city services, parks, multi-use trails and infrastructure improvements while keeping taxes low for the city’s 40,000 residents.

“We just had a very good year,” Lecklider says. “And I have to say I’m as excited as ever about the outlook for Dublin, both in the next five to 10 years and beyond.”

 

Planning for success

Dublin’s development philosophy is quite simple and has guided the city’s progress. “Our strategy is to celebrate the companies we have, retain them and create the conditions that will help them expand,” says Dana McDaniel, deputy city manager and director of economic development. “And then, work to attract new companies.”

Dublin has a healthy mix of large companies, such as Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Health and Verizon, and hundreds of small companies. Nationwide is the city’s largest employer, with 5,800 workers in 2010. The insurance giant is in the midst of relocating about 1,800 employees from leased office space to its downtown Columbus headquarters, a move city officials expected.

“The city of Dublin is an important partner for Nationwide,” says company spokesman Eric Hardgrove. “The Dublin community serves a significant role in the economic vitality of the Central Ohio region and we look forward to maintaining our partnership.”

The median size of the city’s 3,000 companies is seven employees, says Colleen Gilger, Dublin’s economic development manager. “It’s these small and medium companies that drive the economy.”

And there is still plenty of room for growth, McDaniel and Gilger say, pointing out that Dublin’s commercially zoned areas are only 60 percent built out.

          

Success stories

Dublin has had a number of recent success stories in the business community. First, there’s the Wendy’s deal. The company—and legendary founder Dave Thomas—moved its headquarters to Dublin in 1976. It thrived in the city until 2008, when Wendy’s was purchased by Arby’s and the new Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc. moved to Atlanta. In July 2011, Arby’s was sold to an equity firm, and Wendy’s officials decided—with the support of Dublin and state officials—to return all its corporate operations to Dublin.

Smith said Wendy’s will add 50 new jobs and invest $11 million to transform its headquarters, creating a new meeting center that will hold 700 people as well as an employee fitness center.

Other companies are expanding in Dublin as well. IGS Energy recently completed a 105,000-square-foot headquarters on Emerald Parkway along I-270, and Alcatel-Lucent will move about 600 jobs from Columbus to Dublin in a space with I-270 frontage.

Delta Energy also moved from Columbus to Dublin—and into a new headquarters building in March. “Dublin was attractive for a number of reasons,” says Sheri Tackett, president of Delta. “Not only the amenities of the city, but their business development team was very responsive and was there to answer questions and encourage us to come to Dublin.”

Delta originally was part of Ashland, but spun off as a separate company in 2003, with Tackett as the chief executive. The new company initially rented office space from Ashland, then moved to rented space a couple miles east of Dublin, just off Rt. 161. The company grew and needed more space, and the plan was to rent a larger facility, Tackett says. “We thought with the commercial market deteriorating, we could get a bargain,” she says. “The problem was, all the less-expensive places were 80,000 to 100,000 square feet, and we didn’t need that much space.”

After a two-year search, Tackett and Dublin officials reached an agreement to sell the company about four acres of city-owned land on the corner of Commerce Parkway and Perimeter Drive for $225,000 per acre. Delta currently has about 70 employees at its new headquarters, with plans to increase its staff to 100.

“We talked to a number of folks at other companies before we moved back to Dublin,” Tackett says. “My concern was, will they keep being pro-business, or will they get to a certain size and back off. This has not been the case at all, and they will continue to grow and be a good place to do business.”

 

Innovation and technology

Innovation is one of the ways in which Dublin has made itself into a business force. The city recently was named one of the top seven intelligent communities for the second year in a row, joining such cities as Dundee, Scotland; Eindhoven, Netherlands; Ottawa, Canada, and Suwon, South Korea. The Intelligent Community Forum considers five factors for selection: broadband connectivity, knowledgeable workforce, digital inclusion, innovation, and marketing and advocacy.

Dublin was recognized for DubLink, an underground fiber-optic network that led to the establishment of the Central Ohio Research Network, which links government, businesses, schools and universities to the Ohio Supercomputer Center. The city also scored high marks for creating the tech-friendly Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, which is creating the next generation of small businesses. “DubLink is one of the most important infrastructures we have,” McDaniel says.

DubLink includes 125 miles of fiber optics that cost the city $3.5 million to create. “It’s already paid for itself in the savings to Dublin, and over the next 10 years it will pay for itself again because we lease it out,” McDaniel says. “We’re not the only ones with such a system, but we were the first, and now other cities are doing it, but on a smaller scale.”

The Dublin Entrepreneurial Center opened in April 2009 in an office building on Post Road. A partnership between Dublin and TechColumbus, its goal is to encourage and assist local entrepreneurs and provide the services they need to turn their ideas into profitable companies. Ultimately, the hope is that their successes will lead to more jobs in Dublin. “We believe that if we help a company start and have the amenities and things they need, they will stay and grow here,” McDaniel says.

The center rents office space, cubicles and small offices, and also holds a regular series of educational meetings for members. “It’s designed to be a place where entrepreneurs can come and network and be around other entrepreneurs,” says Rick Coplin of TechColumbus, who works on-site. “If someone needs to know something about engineering, there’s an engineer in the building they can go to and talk with and get help from. It can be for free, or they can pay or trade services.”

There are currently 60 companies in the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, says Chaz Freutel, who manages the center for the city and also has two businesses in the building: Get-U-Connected, which helps small companies connect with one another, and Green Pages, which does the same thing, but specializes in working with environmentally friendly companies.

“The first year was start-up,” Freutel says of the center. “The second year was growth and starting to encourage green companies, and this year we’re focusing on improving these areas and providing international business assistance, and focusing on doing business in China and Japan and connecting these people to companies in those countries.”

Lori Crock is one of the center’s success stories. “I worked from my kitchen table when I started,” she says of Written Impact, a marketing communications company. She moved into the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center in September 2009. “It helped me connect with other entrepreneurs; the city is very responsive to the needs of entrepreneurs,” she says.

Crock outgrew the small office in about a year and moved into a larger office space on Memorial Drive. She has one full-time and three part-time employees.

          

Urban to suburban

Dublin is filled with single-family homes on fairly large plots of land. “But the next generation of workers—the knowledge workers—want housing that is more dense and walkable and has more of an urban flavor,” McDaniel says. This growing national trend also includes an eye toward greener and more sustainable communities. “And there are a lot of empty nesters in Dublin who want to downsize, but also want to stay in Dublin,” he adds.

This trend led to the idea for and development of the Bridge Street Corridor plan, which in essence is a complete revamping of the 1,100 acres bordered by Sawmill Road to the east,
Rt. 161 to the south and I-270 to the north. It is, as McDaniel likes to say, akin to bringing the urban to the suburban, with a mixture of commercial and retail businesses, a series of small parks and open spaces intermingled with clusters of higher-density housing. Lecklider says the project will “serve a lot of purposes and have an employment, recreation and entertainment element in addition to a residential element, all in a walkable environment.” It will have the look and feel of German Village and the Short North.

The Bridge Street project still is in the planning stages, but McDaniel says it could include about 3,000 housing units, which would accommodate around 10,000 people. “For the first time, density is OK,” he says.

“This is a 30-year plan and won’t happen overnight,” McDaniel says of the project, which includes Historic Dublin, the OCLC campus and Dublin Village Center. “I’ve already heard rumblings from some of our younger employees,” Tackett adds. “They’re pretty excited about the project.”

          

Innovation center

The western edge of the city is the least developed, and thus has the most potential for business growth. The city owns 200 acres in the area, near the intersection of Post Road and Rt. 33, and has plans for Innovation Park, an economic advancement zone that calls for large business offices and campuses. And McDaniel and Gilger say there is more land surrounding this plot that could eventually be developed commercially.

New zoning rules and the creation of development districts such as Innovation Park will help the city be nimble enough to attract new businesses. “With large corporations, the speed to get the approval to build and get up and running is important,” Gilger notes. “Anything that can save time on the approval process to build or renovate will attract businesses, streamline and shorten the process and provide predictability for the developer or company.”

McDaniel says his office is in discussions with about a dozen companies interested in Innovation Park, which is still in the planning stages. The city can sell or give land to companies, he adds, leveraging the acreage as wisely as possible to maximize the number of jobs, employees and tax revenue.

          

Eye on the future

Carefully managed commercial growth seems all but certain for Dublin. “We want balanced growth,” McDaniel says, adding that the Bridge Street Corridor, Innovation Park and completion of Emerald Parkway will provide that in years to come. In a sense, it’s a modern-day version of the major developments that took place in Dublin in the 1970s that led to the city’s initial surge of growth.

When the economy finally rebounds and businesses start growing, investing, hiring and expanding, Dublin will be ready. 

 

Steve Wartenberg is a freelance writer. 

 

 

Top employers in 2010

Nationwide - 5,800

Cardinal Health - 3,200

Medco Health Solutions - 2,000

Dublin City Schools - 1,800

Verizon Wireless - 1,700

OhioHealth - 1,000

Fiserv Corp - 900

Ashland - 800

CareWorks - 800

OCLC - 750

NCO Financial Group - 600

Nexeo Solutions - 550

Smiths Medical - 550

Century Link - 500

Pacer Global Logistics - 450

The Wendy's Co - 400

City of Dublin - 390

LabCorp - 380

Garden City Group - 375

Interactive Teleservices - 340

Midwestern Auto Group - 260

Saber Solutions, an HP Co - 225

Avizent/Frank Gates - 210

IGS Energy - 200

WD Partners - 200

Stanley Steemer - 200

Quest Software - 200

Source: City of Dublin, Department of Economic Development