October 4, 2024 • 10 mins
Mark Somerson from Columbus Business First has a local look at business news including Microsoft's project in New Albany
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone
(00:02):
line from Columbus Business First dot com managing editor.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's Mark Summerson. Market's been a while. How are you, man?
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Good? How are you? Yeah? I've been off for a
couple of Fridays. Now I'm back.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now you're bad. Things are now right with the world.
I'm glad, it's good. It's good to hear your voice,
and I am I'm shocked to see the bogie in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Let's jump into it. The bogey in is going to
be demolished. What's the story?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, yeah, Well they were purchased by an affiliate of
Mirefield Village not too long ago, uh, who said something
is going to happen, but wouldn't tell us what. Then
we kind of heard some rumblings that something was happening.
We talked to an auctioneer whose company has been hired
to basically sell off everything inside. He told us the
(00:48):
building is going to be demolished to make way for
future development. Those details are still not out there and
Mierfield's not talking, but he went into what everything is
going to be for sale. Now, if you've been to
the Memorial chance are you've at least seen the Bogie
in or whatever its name is, because they've changed it
a few times, most recently Bogie Bar and Grill or
(01:09):
you may not remember it at all because it was
a memorable afternoon there, but yeah, it's it holds a
dear spot in a lot of people's hearts, and they
are getting rid of everything, everything from tables and signage
to the artificial turf that they had on their back patio.
They'll be tables, chairs, there'll be bouncy houses, you know
(01:31):
those bouncy houses. I don't remember the bouncy houses at
the Bogie, but you never know. I could have been
in one.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It was a memorable afternoon for you then.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Exactly exactly, So this was acquired in twenty twenty two.
The building's going to come down, everything inside will be
auctioned off, and then the next big story is what's
going to happen to that property. Will it be something
to do with the tournament to invite people in or
will it be something bigger. We'll have to find out.
But yeah, it's a really interesting story and something that
(02:00):
is so iconic to golf lovers in and around the
Mierfield area that it's really caught the attention of our readers,
and we got a lot of feedback on that one.
And people do, of course have a lot of memories
or lost memory.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh I'm glad you used the word iconic because it
is exactly that, and I do have memories from the Bogie.
And now it closed for a while, it was closed,
but they would reopen just around tournament week.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Didn't they do that for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yes, they did. It closed to regular business in February
twenty twenty two one if their owners had died, but
it remained part of the festivities during the Memorial tournament.
But otherwise it hasn't been used for several years, so
it's just been sitting there and since the Mierfield folks
purchased it, you know, you don't want an empty building
just sitting there. So I think this will be the
(02:48):
first step in whatever plans they have for this spot,
which is a good spot. It's very close to where
all the action is and who knows, you might see
some sort of bigger development there and we'll have to
wait see what Mierfield tells us on that.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, I hope it's a bar restaurant type facility, because
I mean, as you said, that's a great location.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's a great spot during the tournament.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Or elsewhere to go get you know, a burger and
a beverage and you know, they they would have live
music there and it's a great little spot. I hope
they continue to have something golf course related when it
comes to you know, food and beverage or a restaurant there.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, we'll have to see. It's just one of those
one of those stories that's going to develop over time.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
All right, and you'll be on it for us.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Mark Summerson, Columbus Business first dot com. See Nationwide slowly
getting employees back to the office after the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, we had heard that this was going to happen,
and when we called Nationwide and asked them, we heard
that you're going to be asking employees to come Their
language is very interesting, they told us immediately. Nationwide continues
to support a hybrid and flexible workplace environment, but we
would ask people to start coming into the office more frequently.
We don't know what exactly that means, so we use
(04:00):
the word nudge. They're going to be nudging people. Forty
five percent of their employees since the pandemic actually have
worked entirely from home, but they're going to ask certain
business units of the insurance of Financial Services Giant to
come back. If you live anywhere near one of their
nationwide offices, they're going to ask you to come in
more often. And this is the national trend where companies
(04:23):
are starting to ask employees, Hey, the hybrid stuff is great,
but we want a little more collaboration in the office. Plus,
we have these really big leases that we're spending money
on and we need to have a reason to keep
these places open. So yeah, it's one of those stories
that we're starting to hear. A lot of companies do this,
(04:44):
especially in downtown, and their CEO, Kirk Walker, has said
they really are big into downtown. They have a huge
investment there and it's important that we have a success
in downtown and this is part of it to bring
some of those employees back. And you know, our company
is fully remote during the pandemic, and business first is
now reporters are back three days a week, editors are
(05:07):
back four or five days a week, and we're starting
to see that in the Arena district in downtown, and
I'm sure it's in offices across the country. As the
week progresses, especially on Wednesdays, you see a lot of
people downtown.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Well, and that'll help some of the vacancy rates, I
would imagine, which is becoming a problem downtown and is
nationwide also getting ready to cut jobs too.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I've heard that kind of going around.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yes, they did. This is they're going to be cutting
a number of employees over the next couple of years,
starting in July or excuse me, they announced it in July.
They're going to decrease their workforce by five percent. That's
a big number. They have the number of rules. They
haven't said exactly, but those being let go will get
(05:48):
two months noticed. So that's going to start early next year,
and I don't think that's going to affect too much
of this come back to the office thing. They have
so many people in Central oh Highway. They have twenty
four thousand employees start, including eleven thousand in Ohio, So
that five percent. We'll have to see what those numbers
really do mean, what kind of jobs they're going to be.
(06:10):
And yeah, it's a sort of a mixed message like
come back to the office, but some of you are
going to be let go as well, so don't bother
coming back to the office.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, when I hear more and more folks are going
back to the office, especially downtown, what I hear is
is morning drive traffic is going to pick up as
more and more folks are instead of having to, you know,
go to work in flip flops and shorts, they're actually
going to have to put on pants and get in
the car and head downtown.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yes, I had to give up my flip flops for
work too, Definitely. It's something that was hard to do.
And I would rather live in shorts than in dress pants.
But you know, some days you got to get dressed.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Up and head down to well you need to come
in and hang with us. We're we're all. We're in
our finest shorts and hoodies this morning.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That's that the way to go.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's how we roll in radio every time.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
The story I mentioned earlier this week, just add the
little blurb on it was Microsoft that they wanted on
the land rush in central Ohio. With all of these
big tech operations moving here, Microsoft is ready to break
into the central Ohio data center market with a new
project in New Albany.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, they've been working on this for a while. Because
these plans you can't just announce it first. You have
to sort of check in with aep to see if
they're going to have the power to make sure that
you can get a data center up and running. So
we know they've been working. It had to have been
more than a year on this project. Then they decided
and announced that they had purchased a property a New Albany,
(07:37):
which is a big space, and then they said it's
going to be a four hundred and twenty million dollar project.
That's when we went into overdrive and charted to check
how much other property that this giant company is purchased.
It's almost nine hundred or excuse me, close to one
thousand acres in the area. So they've got two hundred
and eighty nine acres and Potascala, two hundred twenty seven
(07:59):
acres in eth two hundred and twenty three acres and Hebruns.
And that's in addition to the almost two hundred acres
site and new ality where they're going to construct this
two hundred and forty five thousand square foot data center.
So they've got property all over the place. So this
is not going to be their first probably not going
to be their first and only data center. They expand.
They have these centers all over the United States and
(08:21):
the world, and they are going to definitely start building.
So yeah, nine hundred and thirty six acres across these communities.
New Albany voted this week gave them a fifteen year,
one hundred percent tax property tax abatement. Again, these data
centers don't have that many jobs coming. They're giant spaces.
They're run by just a handful of people inside to
(08:44):
make sure things are humming, and then it just does
what it does. And with all of AI and all
of the computing cloud stuff that we use every day
just with our cell phones and computers, this is going
to help feed that. But this is the problem in
Central Ohio. There is now a moratorium on data center's
sucking power from AEP because they just don't have it,
(09:06):
and so there is going to be this roadblock down
the road. There's like fifty people on the waiting list
for AEP to sign up to build data centers in
central Ohio, which is causing some of them to look
into other areas of the United States where these roadblocks
are not put up. So it'll be interesting. It had
to have been Microsoft that has been working on this
for years because getting that power in the first place
(09:29):
is the biggest turtle to get over.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Have you had any conversations with the folks at AEP
about this, because to me, that's the story. I mean,
you've got Microsoft of course, the Intel plant. Amazon's got
a number of centers here. Google's got some operations here,
and they're all energy hogs.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, we had a cover story on this about two
months ago where we talked to AEP about this and
they laid it out on Hey, we just don't have
the power. We are purchasing this. We have these transmission
lines from power stations, make sure that Columbus and Central Aisle,
which is growing rapidly, has the power it needs. Then
on top of that, we have these mega companies coming
(10:08):
in to build these data centers and they require an
enornimate amount of power to do so. So, yeah, we
did talk to AP. We had a cover story on that,
and they did spell it out that this is a
problem not only here but across the United States where
power sources there used to be coal fire power plants
and nuclear power plants everywhere. Those have kind of tapered off.
(10:31):
You may have seen in the news that three mile
Island may be coming back in some sort of extent
to power one of these giant companies in the future,
because there is such a need for energy to get
these things off the ground.
All right on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone
(00:02):
line from Columbus Business First dot com managing editor.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's Mark Summerson. Market's been a while. How are you, man?
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Good? How are you? Yeah? I've been off for a
couple of Fridays. Now I'm back.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now you're bad. Things are now right with the world.
I'm glad, it's good. It's good to hear your voice,
and I am I'm shocked to see the bogie in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Let's jump into it. The bogey in is going to
be demolished. What's the story?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, yeah, Well they were purchased by an affiliate of
Mirefield Village not too long ago, uh, who said something
is going to happen, but wouldn't tell us what. Then
we kind of heard some rumblings that something was happening.
We talked to an auctioneer whose company has been hired
to basically sell off everything inside. He told us the
(00:48):
building is going to be demolished to make way for
future development. Those details are still not out there and
Mierfield's not talking, but he went into what everything is
going to be for sale. Now, if you've been to
the Memorial chance are you've at least seen the Bogie
in or whatever its name is, because they've changed it
a few times, most recently Bogie Bar and Grill or
(01:09):
you may not remember it at all because it was
a memorable afternoon there, but yeah, it's it holds a
dear spot in a lot of people's hearts, and they
are getting rid of everything, everything from tables and signage
to the artificial turf that they had on their back patio.
They'll be tables, chairs, there'll be bouncy houses, you know
(01:31):
those bouncy houses. I don't remember the bouncy houses at
the Bogie, but you never know. I could have been
in one.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
It was a memorable afternoon for you then.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Exactly exactly, So this was acquired in twenty twenty two.
The building's going to come down, everything inside will be
auctioned off, and then the next big story is what's
going to happen to that property. Will it be something
to do with the tournament to invite people in or
will it be something bigger. We'll have to find out.
But yeah, it's a really interesting story and something that
(02:00):
is so iconic to golf lovers in and around the
Mierfield area that it's really caught the attention of our readers,
and we got a lot of feedback on that one.
And people do, of course have a lot of memories
or lost memory.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh I'm glad you used the word iconic because it
is exactly that, and I do have memories from the Bogie.
And now it closed for a while, it was closed,
but they would reopen just around tournament week.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Didn't they do that for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yes, they did. It closed to regular business in February
twenty twenty two one if their owners had died, but
it remained part of the festivities during the Memorial tournament.
But otherwise it hasn't been used for several years, so
it's just been sitting there and since the Mierfield folks
purchased it, you know, you don't want an empty building
just sitting there. So I think this will be the
(02:48):
first step in whatever plans they have for this spot,
which is a good spot. It's very close to where
all the action is and who knows, you might see
some sort of bigger development there and we'll have to
wait see what Mierfield tells us on that.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, I hope it's a bar restaurant type facility, because
I mean, as you said, that's a great location.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's a great spot during the tournament.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Or elsewhere to go get you know, a burger and
a beverage and you know, they they would have live
music there and it's a great little spot. I hope
they continue to have something golf course related when it
comes to you know, food and beverage or a restaurant there.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, we'll have to see. It's just one of those
one of those stories that's going to develop over time.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
All right, and you'll be on it for us.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Mark Summerson, Columbus Business first dot com. See Nationwide slowly
getting employees back to the office after the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, we had heard that this was going to happen,
and when we called Nationwide and asked them, we heard
that you're going to be asking employees to come Their
language is very interesting, they told us immediately. Nationwide continues
to support a hybrid and flexible workplace environment, but we
would ask people to start coming into the office more frequently.
We don't know what exactly that means, so we use
(04:00):
the word nudge. They're going to be nudging people. Forty
five percent of their employees since the pandemic actually have
worked entirely from home, but they're going to ask certain
business units of the insurance of Financial Services Giant to
come back. If you live anywhere near one of their
nationwide offices, they're going to ask you to come in
more often. And this is the national trend where companies
(04:23):
are starting to ask employees, Hey, the hybrid stuff is great,
but we want a little more collaboration in the office. Plus,
we have these really big leases that we're spending money
on and we need to have a reason to keep
these places open. So yeah, it's one of those stories
that we're starting to hear. A lot of companies do this,
(04:44):
especially in downtown, and their CEO, Kirk Walker, has said
they really are big into downtown. They have a huge
investment there and it's important that we have a success
in downtown and this is part of it to bring
some of those employees back. And you know, our company
is fully remote during the pandemic, and business first is
now reporters are back three days a week, editors are
(05:07):
back four or five days a week, and we're starting
to see that in the Arena district in downtown, and
I'm sure it's in offices across the country. As the
week progresses, especially on Wednesdays, you see a lot of
people downtown.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Well, and that'll help some of the vacancy rates, I
would imagine, which is becoming a problem downtown and is
nationwide also getting ready to cut jobs too.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I've heard that kind of going around.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yes, they did. This is they're going to be cutting
a number of employees over the next couple of years,
starting in July or excuse me, they announced it in July.
They're going to decrease their workforce by five percent. That's
a big number. They have the number of rules. They
haven't said exactly, but those being let go will get
(05:48):
two months noticed. So that's going to start early next year,
and I don't think that's going to affect too much
of this come back to the office thing. They have
so many people in Central oh Highway. They have twenty
four thousand employees start, including eleven thousand in Ohio, So
that five percent. We'll have to see what those numbers
really do mean, what kind of jobs they're going to be.
(06:10):
And yeah, it's a sort of a mixed message like
come back to the office, but some of you are
going to be let go as well, so don't bother
coming back to the office.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, when I hear more and more folks are going
back to the office, especially downtown, what I hear is
is morning drive traffic is going to pick up as
more and more folks are instead of having to, you know,
go to work in flip flops and shorts, they're actually
going to have to put on pants and get in
the car and head downtown.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yes, I had to give up my flip flops for
work too, Definitely. It's something that was hard to do.
And I would rather live in shorts than in dress pants.
But you know, some days you got to get dressed.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Up and head down to well you need to come
in and hang with us. We're we're all. We're in
our finest shorts and hoodies this morning.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That's that the way to go.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's how we roll in radio every time.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
The story I mentioned earlier this week, just add the
little blurb on it was Microsoft that they wanted on
the land rush in central Ohio. With all of these
big tech operations moving here, Microsoft is ready to break
into the central Ohio data center market with a new
project in New Albany.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, they've been working on this for a while. Because
these plans you can't just announce it first. You have
to sort of check in with aep to see if
they're going to have the power to make sure that
you can get a data center up and running. So
we know they've been working. It had to have been
more than a year on this project. Then they decided
and announced that they had purchased a property a New Albany,
(07:37):
which is a big space, and then they said it's
going to be a four hundred and twenty million dollar project.
That's when we went into overdrive and charted to check
how much other property that this giant company is purchased.
It's almost nine hundred or excuse me, close to one
thousand acres in the area. So they've got two hundred
and eighty nine acres and Potascala, two hundred twenty seven
(07:59):
acres in eth two hundred and twenty three acres and Hebruns.
And that's in addition to the almost two hundred acres
site and new ality where they're going to construct this
two hundred and forty five thousand square foot data center.
So they've got property all over the place. So this
is not going to be their first probably not going
to be their first and only data center. They expand.
They have these centers all over the United States and
(08:21):
the world, and they are going to definitely start building.
So yeah, nine hundred and thirty six acres across these communities.
New Albany voted this week gave them a fifteen year,
one hundred percent tax property tax abatement. Again, these data
centers don't have that many jobs coming. They're giant spaces.
They're run by just a handful of people inside to
(08:44):
make sure things are humming, and then it just does
what it does. And with all of AI and all
of the computing cloud stuff that we use every day
just with our cell phones and computers, this is going
to help feed that. But this is the problem in
Central Ohio. There is now a moratorium on data center's
sucking power from AEP because they just don't have it,
(09:06):
and so there is going to be this roadblock down
the road. There's like fifty people on the waiting list
for AEP to sign up to build data centers in
central Ohio, which is causing some of them to look
into other areas of the United States where these roadblocks
are not put up. So it'll be interesting. It had
to have been Microsoft that has been working on this
for years because getting that power in the first place
(09:29):
is the biggest turtle to get over.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Have you had any conversations with the folks at AEP
about this, because to me, that's the story. I mean,
you've got Microsoft of course, the Intel plant. Amazon's got
a number of centers here. Google's got some operations here,
and they're all energy hogs.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, we had a cover story on this about two
months ago where we talked to AEP about this and
they laid it out on Hey, we just don't have
the power. We are purchasing this. We have these transmission
lines from power stations, make sure that Columbus and Central Aisle,
which is growing rapidly, has the power it needs. Then
on top of that, we have these mega companies coming
(10:08):
in to build these data centers and they require an
enornimate amount of power to do so. So, yeah, we
did talk to AP. We had a cover story on that,
and they did spell it out that this is a
problem not only here but across the United States where
power sources there used to be coal fire power plants
and nuclear power plants everywhere. Those have kind of tapered off.
(10:31):
You may have seen in the news that three mile
Island may be coming back in some sort of extent
to power one of these giant companies in the future,
because there is such a need for energy to get
these things off the ground.
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