Brewery expanding to Marysville in former Walking Distance Brewing space

Mark Somerson of Columbus Business First looks at all the local business news happening around Columbus

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
We check in with Mark Summerson, Columbus Business first in
our weekly check Mark.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm good? Hey, I thought of you last weekend.

Speaker 4 (00:09):
We flew to Chicago and went to Port Columbus and
as we're driving in.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I saw the sign for vallet.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Mark and did you go? Did you use it?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
You know what?

Speaker 4 (00:22):
I went down this little road and ended up in
the red lot. Okay, but I did think of you.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm like, would that be?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's? It is? It is a game changer. Again.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's not exactly cheap, but you know, I'm willing at
this stage in my life, Mark, and we're roughly the
same age. You may have me by a year or two.
I am willing to pay for convenience. Yes, and that
is that is a very convenient thing until they get
the new terminal at Port Columbus set up. I we
you were giving me grief because I took the family

(00:55):
and we went to Florida for a couple of days
and I used the vallet option and instead of going
into the red line.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Now I'm surprised you didn't use the walking lot.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
I can't walk that far. And another funny thing. We
have the TSA PreCheck, which means you don't have to
state your shoes or belt off or anything. And so
I went through the metal detector and set it off,
so they said take off your watch, went back through,
set it off, and they said.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Take off your belt.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
And I went back through and it beeped again, and
there's nothing else. And then I remembered I had my
knee replaced and I've got a titanium knee and completely forgot,
and so I had to go back and go through
the full body scanner at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
That's fun.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, that I was that guy who was holding up
the line.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
So let me ask you this about the TSA PreCheck.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Did you notice did you notice the lines for the
pre check were almost as long as the normal TSA
security lines.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
It was funny.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
There really wasn't that many people that we were flying
on a Friday at like eight in the morning and
it wasn't all that crowded. But in Chicago when we're
flying back, the TSA pre check line was so much shorter.
So yeah, we've we tend to use that.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
We like it.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
It's kind of like our ballet parking there.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
You gotta find areas in your life where you can
splurge a little bit. It's funny because I brought that up.
We were coming back from Tampa and my wife is
TSA pre check.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I am not.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
She took one kid, I took the other. But there
were more people in the pre check line than in
the regular line. And I'm going listen, if everybody's TSA
pre check, nobody's TSA pre check at some point.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
True, that's true, All.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
And you know, boy, I thought you were going to
say you took off your shirt and your trousers and
everything else and you had to out here there.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Remember I am, I am a bionic man with a
titanium knee and completely forgot. Yeah, so that I should
not forget.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well that makes sense than the walking lot, Probably not
for you. Mark Summerson, Columbus Business First, Good stuff today
in Columbus Business First dot com. A kind of a flipper,
A change in micro brew in Marysville. What's the deal
going on there?

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (03:09):
In February, Walking Distance Brewing in Mary'sville closed. They had
a sort of contemptuous relationship with.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
The area there.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
They supported a lot of LBGTQ things and they just
didn't get along with community, and finally, after three years
they closed, but camp Brewing base Camp hopes to open
up there in May sixteen. They are another brewery from
nearby and said, hey, we think this space is great.

(03:38):
We're going to move in there. They've got this camping
theme at their regular spot and they thought this base
Camp would be a great idea to go on top
of that, they're near Indian Lake on twenty nine acres.
They have our v side cabins and a pool next
to their tap room, and they said, hey, it would
be cool if we were at Marysville as well. So

(03:59):
one brewery moves out, another expands and moves in, so
Marysville uptown Marysville gets another brewery, which is good news
for them. It's always nice to have a local brewery
in town and somewhere you can take your family and
go and have a nice beer. And yeah that it
filled it nicely. It didn't take too long and Marysville's

(04:20):
got some beer again.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, that's good. That's good for them.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
The other one is a Safelight Auto making some upgrades,
so they're headquarters. They're bringing people back to the office Safelight.
Of course, the automotive glass repair company. What's going on.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
Well, the way we found out about this was actually
through city council. And this is a strange little thing
because Safelight decided we're going to bring people back. They
haven't say when, but they needed to upgrade their headquarters
to do so. So they said they're going to make
nineteen point two million dollars in upgrades to its headquarters.

(04:55):
But here's the thing. They applied for a job creation
tax credit, which is worth three point one million dollars
of the deal of the company meets expectations, including hiring
twenty five new people. But then it's it's kind of
interesting because the city has this program now that they're

(05:16):
looking at helping companies that want to stay where they
are and make improvements to bring employees back. So city
council came up with this plan. They said, it's brand new,
it's a pilot program and it's going to They haven't
got all the planning put out.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yet, but yeah, Safelight gets to use some of.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
This job creation money that can go toward it's nineteen
point two million dollars in upgrades to its headquarters. So yeah,
city council is working now with companies to make it
worth their while to stay where they are, upgrade their
facilities and bring their employees back.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, there's a number of including the state of Ohio,
a number of companies dead JP, Morgan Chase doing this.
You know, the Amazon folks that have been doing that.
I think it's think it's kind of funny that, Hey,
in order for you to bring workers back, you need
to incentivize them with a nicer office space to come
back to.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah, they're getting five hundred thousand dollars in funding from
the city Department of Development. It's part of this Commercial
Office Monitorization Incentive pilot program, which we had never heard of.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Once again, it's a pilot program.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
We'll have to see who else applies, where this funding
is going to come from, and what the city plans
I'm doing for it. But they don't want to lose
companies to the suburbs. They want them to stay in Columbus,
and they want them to be able to fix up
their buildings because a lot of them, you know, people
have been working at home for a couple of years
and the offices have suffered.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Doug Buchanan, offer any incentive for you to get back
to the office. I mean, is he going to bring
you more better?

Speaker 4 (06:45):
I'm there four days a week, and our reporters are
there three days a week.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
The only day I'm not there is today.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
I'm sitting in my home office, which is which is nice.
But yeah, we're actually moving offices. We'll be in the
Encovia Building come next month, which is on Broad Street,
right across from the Art Museum.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'm still waiting for my invitation for a tour, but
maybe we'll wait to the new space and you can
have me down and check out the new digs down there.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Come by our old place anytime you want.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
I just won't be there.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
From Mark Summerson, Columbus Business First dot com, I see
this happened quick. The defense tech firm Andral, which is
just south of Rickenbacker Airport, they are hiring now.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, this story really took off yesterday when we heard
that Anderil's starting the hiring process. As you know, they
are going to create four thousand jobs over the next
few years, and we were just waiting for them to say, Okay,
now we're starting to hire. So the advertise for open positions,
and these are the positions. Senior quality engineer, senior production manager,

(07:45):
senior manufacturing engineer, quality inspector, Materials Associate manufacturing engineer, and
integration technicians. So these are tech jobs and three of
those are senior level jobs. So they are starting to
look into Okay, we're gonna have to start getting some
people in our Columbus area trained and ready for when

(08:06):
this opens up, because, as you know, it is a
huge project. I mean huge.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Project, and it's taking up a ton of space.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Out there and they're really gonna grow and so yeah,
they're starting to hire in all the will be four
thousand jobs by twenty thirty five, which is at this
at the largest job building project to come into Ohio
like this, And yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's exciting to see. I am not qualified for any
of that job.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
I can put a few words together occasionally when I'm
writing and editing, but yeah, I don't know how to
do anything when and especially when it comes to the military,
I'd be really afraid that something would blow up.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, they need a communications person. Maybe you're the guy there,
but other than.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
That, I'd be terrible at that. You know, I'm a
newspaper guy, is thirty sixth year in the business.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
I know nothing else, all right, I'm stuck.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Hey, we had a really big weekend. It was the
weekend of March first in Columbus. Of course, you had
the NHL Stadium Series at Ohio Stadium. You had the
Arnold Sports Festival happening that weekend. And we've got some
numbers now, some revenue numbers for the city of Columbus,
and not too shabby, not at all.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
I mean, between those two events you had close to
two hundred thousand attendees, which is anytime you bring people
into Columbus, that's good. But those brought nearly forty million
dollars in direct visiting spending. And the first one was
the Stadium Series on March first.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
I was there. I think you were there too. Twenty
four thousand of us were there.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
That brought in twenty four million dollars in direct spending.
According to the Columbus Sports Commission, the Arnolds Festival, which
went on over three day or February twenty seventh to
March second, brought in about one hundred and five thousand
people and created fifteen point six million dollars in direct
visitors spending. Most of that was for tanning oil and
chicken cotts.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
I would think a lot of powder.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
You don't I have no idea what these people are
spending on, but I don't think they were buying, you know,
lots of fatty foods and stuff. It was mostly your
lean meats and your tanning oil. But both of those
combined bring a lot of money into central Ohio. And
you know, the people at Experienced Columbus, which promote tourism here,

(10:28):
are extremely happy to see these kind of numbers, and
so was the Sports Commission who helped bring the Stadium
series into Columbus.