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One of central Ohio’s most prolific office builders, the Daimler Group, has been brought in to help create the next phase of New Albany Business Park.
Daimler will join New Albany Co. and Georgetown Co. in developing more than 200 acres of land along Rt. 161 over the next several years. The companies will be joined in the partnership by Capitol Square Ltd., a subsidiary of The Dispatch Printing Company, publisher of The Dispatch.
New Albany Business Park is a sprawling district that covers 2,000 acres and includes more than 2.2 million square feet of general-office and medical-office space. More than 8,000 employees work at the 13 companies located there.
Developers will work together to plan the next phase, which covers several locations within the business park. Daimler Group has developed or built more than 170 projects in central Ohio with a value of more than $1 billion.
"What appealed to us is the success Daimler has had over the last two decades in Gahanna and Westerville," said Edgar Lampert, partner of Georgetown Co. "New Albany is now ripe for development that Daimler is so successful at. We think it is a strong team."
Lampert said Daimler Group will focus on projects for specific clients, rather than so-called speculative construction.
Aetna U.S. Healthcare New Albany Business Park in 1998 when it moved into a 210,000-square-foot Midwest service center built by Duke Realty Investments. Duke also built the second building at the park, a 325,000-square-foot national service center for Discover Card.
Other tenants include New Albany Surgical Hospital, State Farm Insurance Co. and Too Inc. American Electric Power said recently that it will build a $44 million operations center at the park. That project is not part of the partnership involving Daimler Group.
The business park offers incentives to companies based on revenue they generate. They’re typically 10 or 15 years in length, New Albany Co. President Bill Ebbing said.
The suburban office market in central Ohio hasn’t fared very well in the past five years. In a recent research report, CB Richard Ellis said vacancy in the market rose slightly in the quarter to 21.3 percent. It has stood above 20 percent since 2001.
However, the New Albany Business Park developers think the timing is right to begin the park’s next phase, in part because of the recent addition of housing in the area at a wide variety of prices. Ebbing said more than 5,000 homes have been built or are planned in and around the village, and that creates more workers in the immediate area.
Also, access to the park is getting easier. Construction on the Rt. 161 bypass continues, with a plan to widen the road to four lanes all the way to Newark. That project is expected to be completed in 2008.
"Access to New Albany is going to be second to none," said Robert C. White Sr., Daimler chairman.
mpramik@dispatch.com