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Good morning. Tri Village. This is David Polakowski, the President

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and CEO of the Tri Trivillage Chamber Partnership.

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I hope you are doing well.

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And this morning I have one of my ex official board members, Mr.

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Joe Henderson. I don't ever use that, Mr.

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Joe Henderson often. So we're being official, but that's good. Yeah.

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So Joe is the economic development director for the city of UA,

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and he and I have been strong partners working together

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since day one. So, Joe, how did you get into economic development?

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Good story. So I went to the University of Cincinnati for I got my bachelors in urban planning

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and they are currently ranked second in the country in football.

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Back in my day, we would have been not even ranked and no one came to the games.

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Now we're sold out and packed houses.

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But one to UC.

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Uc has a co op program

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where we spend half our time in College in the classroom and half the time working

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for other cities or counties or companies in planning or whatnot.

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I worked for an economic development firm in San Francisco, spent two summers doing that and kind of

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got introduced to economic development, and when I graduated, I moved to

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Washington, DC, got into economic development.

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Same firm did it on the East Coast and enjoyed it for various reasons.

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I came back to Ohio. I spent a year

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being a foolish 20 something year old chasing a lifelong dream

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and then decided it was time to get back into the real world.

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And with I'd say, support for my father,

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but more of a you better get back into a real job.

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I went into planning and did that for

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Pickerington for five years and then was promoted to

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development director out there at age 31 or so and did that for five years.

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And that's why I started doing economic development. That's part of that job.

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I ran a planning Department, code enforcement building

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and then actually six years ago next week, 23rd, which is today may even be today.

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Saturday, Saturday. I became get hired by the city of Upper Arlington

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to come over and just focus on economic development.

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I've been here six years, and I love it.

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It's fun because a lot of ways I look at it.

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I tried to describe it to someone yesterday and it's like you're kind of the cheerleader for the city, which for me,

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makes sense since I was a College cheerleader, but

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I was going to say that for I figured I'd get that out now for something.

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That's how we connected. So I was only one year.

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But I did it for three, and then I coached

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for nine and to be able to be the person that

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talks to the business community, understands the business community

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and represents them every day with my leadership in the city.

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And when we go into looking at projects, I try to come in from the office user, the retail user

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viewpoints of development construction programs that we're looking to do and to

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support them and see these companies grow is awesome.

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And that's one of the reasons I love working with the Chambers because

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I get to hear directly from the businesses and build a relationship

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with the businesses in the Chamber and try to do good things and make them

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grow and be better businesses for everybody.

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So when you look back from your starting

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career in economic development today, I know you went from Picklington to Upper

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Arlington, but just the processes have changed.

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What do you feel? The greatest changes have been from 20 years ago to today.

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I think it's businesses being able to be

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Swift on their feet, quick on their feet, more or less.

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You look at the way that you do

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your business, and we can't ignore what's happened in the last couple of

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years with COVID and how the businesses that were able to switch what they were

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doing to change their processes and how they reach their

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customers or how they reach the community or those that survive.

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If you look at the companies that survived and even those that thrive, it's because they were able to

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modify what they were doing in a way that fits the current market conditions.

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And whether that's being able to go online

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or have better websites or being able to do delivery or curbside pickup or

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even work from home with everyone, we all have to learn how to Zoom.

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Those are big changes. And those companies that jumped on at first were the ones that I think

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had less impact financially in the last couple of years.

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And that's interesting. Like the trends.

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What do you think? I know like with Columbus, I believe it's Chase's and coming back

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TownTown, have you seen any challenges here in UA with businesses

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more so the white collar saying we don't need the office space anymore, not in UA.

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We're a different animal than, say, downtown Columbus or your Dublin's.

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And that's because if you look at the makeup of our professional office, it's more service and financial industry.

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So these are folks who

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they are professional office, but they're seeing clients.

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They're doctors, they're eye doctors or dentists.

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And so they need to be in the office in

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order to see their customers or their patients.

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And then when you think of some of our finance companies that are here in banking

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industry and insurance industry, that's here,

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we have seen some that have gone remote, but a lot of them,

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they are still coming to the office or finding ways to work, maybe split time,

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a couple of days in the office, a couple of days at home.

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So we haven't seen a big of an impact on the communities.

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To be honest, our financial situation continues to do well, continues to grow.

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We did not see in the beginning, everybody saw the kind of drop off, but we have come

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back strong in our business community is doing well.

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Our finance director says that our withholdings are up over month over month.

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And so we are excited.

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And part of that is you see the development that's happening in the city.

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I think that's one of the signs that we're in a really good position

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because of the makeup of our uses and our businesses that are here.

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So when you look at the projects that you have going, there's just a few there's how many going right now at one time.

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Exactly the two huge ones.

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But there's 20 other ones.

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So when you look at the two big ones, we have Gateway, Arlington, Gateway,

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and they drove by a few weeks ago, and there's this big hole in the ground.

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So that's going to be what's the structure.

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So that is going to be an eleven story, mixed use building.

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It'll have first floor retail.

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It'll have above that. It'll have 125 or so apartments,

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kind of wrapping the outside on the north, and that would be west side.

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And then on the easternmost portion of the building.

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It's a massive site. On the easternmost portion.

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On the top, there will be, I believe it's five stories of office, 140,000 sqft.

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That will be on top of that

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74,000 of that already got Lois on for companies to move into it.

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And all of that is wrapping around about an 863 car parking garage.

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It's a seven storey parking garage, and it's all wrapped around.

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So it is a massive building. It is one of the largest

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projects in the region under construction, it will be the largest building in UA.

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It'll also be the tallest building in UA. And there's only going to be one or two

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buildings in central Ohio, in the suburbs that's taller and what I will say.

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And I got to always say this. It abuts the Ohio State University Innovation District.

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So while it looks tall and out of place when it gets built in the next two or

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three years, that campus is going to see nine to 12

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million sqft of buildings on it, mostly research development.

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It will blend in very well with its surroundings over time.

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It's just going to be one of the first ones.

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There's only two other buildings under construction right now.

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So it will stand out for a little while.

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But it will blend in in the long term. Yeah.

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That's a whole nother story. That OSU project, definitely.

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There's some folks I think you should talk to on that one.

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That would be great because they're doing some great things and we've

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heard them speak and they're estimating three to 5 billion.

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That's what the beat an investment.

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And when you drive by that site, it's just amazing already.

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What's going on? Yeah. It's west campus, the innovation District, one of three

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innovation districts in the state of Ohio, funded through folks like Jobs, Ohio and

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some of their partners, their commercialization partners.

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It's going to be awesome. The things that are going to come out of there are going to be life changing for

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people in the world with the research they are going to be

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doing and technologies that are going to come out of there.

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So it's exciting that that's going to be right next to you.

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I think it's going to be something that we are going to benefit from

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overflow businesses, businesses that want to be near the innovation district

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are going to look to Lane Avenue, folks who want to work there and live nearby.

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They're going to look to you as somewhere to live.

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So such a great asset for the community.

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We're excited about it, and

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it is fun because it seems like every time you drive by there's like a new building

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coming up on their campus, everything we're doing in UA, it feels like nothing.

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When I drive by the innovation district and see what they're up to.

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The other little nothing project that's going on is the wonderful community

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center, which, again, Congratulations to the city of UA, the residents.

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I mean, it passed almost 80%. Five votes, as my city manager likes to say, it was five votes short of 80%.

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We're very proud of that. That is a very large project that since the day I got here,

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we've been watching what would happen to the old Macy's,

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the lovely blue brick building that people here have an affinity for.

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Yes, I have a blue brick sitting on

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my bookshelf at home, just like I think every resident in UA does.

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By this point, we were trying to figure out what to do with that.

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And after many years of conversations with

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Kroger, they decided it was time to part with it.

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But they weren't going to put a grocery store there.

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And we worked with them, and they did an RFP to find a developer for the site.

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And the city was willing to talk to and work with those developers.

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At the end, Continental, who actually is doing both projects.

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Continental is doing Gateway, and they're doing Kingsdale.

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Which is a coincidence. Like you said, it's an RFP process.

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Kroger's was the one who both of these were done by private developers.

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The city is partnering with them when it comes to incentives and stuff like that.

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But we did not choose who did these projects.

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But Continental got the project from Krogers.

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They bought the land. Part of that deal with the city was

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if our community said they wanted to do a community center that they would

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as part of the deal, give us some land on the site.

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So they are building two buildings.

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They're building a seven storey assisted living facility.

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It might be off on the numbers, but it's like 110 units, rooms, seven storeys.

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It will have a restaurant on the first floor and some services in the building.

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And that will be on the northwest corner

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of the site, the old Macy site, the east side of the site.

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They're going to build market rate apartments.

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I think it's five stories, market rate apartments.

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I want to say it's 350 or so units.

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I could be wrong on that. And below it's going to be two levels of parking garage.

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So the first two levels will be a parking garage and then five stories of apartments above it.

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It'll be seven stories as well.

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The other part of our deal Besides getting the land was we would get parking spaces in that garage, basically about a floor of

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it, which will serve as parking for the community center.

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The community center is a couple of year long process where the

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residents of Upper Arlington, via the city Council did a

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community task force where they looked at, do we want to do a community center?

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And if we did what would be a part of it?

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They looked at this independent body, looked at all kinds of different things.

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They hired some consultants to help them along the way, and they came back saying

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they believe the community center would be good.

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They think that the uses that they outlined in their study should go in the building.

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And then the city Council took that report, took that information and went to

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the ballot and said, okay, residence, yes or no.

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Do we want a community center? And that's where the 80% came in, which is just in today's times.

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80% on anything is great. 80% on a community center is wonderful.

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And that began our process and council's process of selecting a firm.

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And we have selected MSA architects out of Cincinnati.

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They have an office here in Columbus as well, to lead us through the process of designing the community center.

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And we're pretty excited about it. And they are a new member to the Chamber.

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They are a new member for the Chamber. The other thing about the community Center, I keep saying the other thing, but

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we found a way to do this without raising taxes.

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And that's the piece that I think I'm most proud of.

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It was a team effort led by our city manager and at the time, one of our

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assistant city managers in our finance Department.

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And we looked at, okay, what ways can we help pay for this?

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And so we found ways through some TIFF on the site TIFF that existing tiffs in the area are

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there ways that if we've paid for the public infrastructure that was needed

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on those projects and those tips are still pulling off cash.

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Was there a way to redirect it to pay for the community center because it is a public service and we're able to do that.

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We have some bed tax with the new second hotel that we have opening up

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here that opened up last year with two hotels now using some of their bed tacks.

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Another unique thing that we did was we looked at putting

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office space into the community center where we could

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charge a little bit above market rate or whatever the cost to build it

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and take that excess and use that to pay down the community center.

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And then also whatever withholdings are generated from those jobs in that office space, taking those withholdings and

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directly putting that back into the community center. And that's what's going to allow us to build a $54 million community

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center without raising taxes on our residence with the community center.

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I know the plans aren't

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set in stone yet, but tonight you have a community meeting all day.

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You're spending planning the community center.

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What is the idea to have in the center that would be available to the community?

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Definitely. What I'll say is I'm

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not the best person to talk about the community, so I will give it my best go.

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But our parks director

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or city manager, they're living this more minute by minute where I kind of come in a

15:49

couple of days, a couple of hours a week and talk about it.

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But there are people who are better dedicated to this project than I.

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So I'll give it the best thing I can here.

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But in the community center, one of the things that was driving it

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from my viewpoint was we have a senior center that

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definitely lived his life, and our seniors deserve better.

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And we were trying to find a way to build better for them.

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And by building a new community

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center, bringing some of these recreational aspects,

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indoor recreation to our community, I think our residents needed, but then

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marrying it with our senior center so that our seniors have access to

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an indoor pool, to track, to basketball courts

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so that they can do things to the gym, to be able to do things to

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help keep them young, keep them in good shape, keep their minds awake and working

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and their bodies working was a great connection.

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I think that's really when you look at it, the senior center aspect is probably the biggest piece to me.

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The recreational for our kids, our children,

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our active adults, our seniors being able to have leagues and weight room and indoor

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pool so that we can have swim lessons or folks that want to swim year around, or if

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you have a birthday party, you can do it there.

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It's really just going to be a valuable key.

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And then from the economic development

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side, the idea to have office space in there is going to be wonderful.

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And we have some partners who have already kind of signed a letter of intent hoping

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that they will take the space that it's not just

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office, it's more of a medical office that will provide services

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to our residents and children and adults in that facility.

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So it'll be a great partnership and relationship between the tenants that are going to go

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in there in the city because it's going to make it really a one of a kind facility.

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I say it and I really mean it. I don't think there's going to be anything like this in the world.

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It's going to be seven stories tall. Most likely, it's going to be

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a community center built vertical versus a lot of cities.

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It's one or two stories and it's spread out.

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Ours is going to be tall because the site is small and then we're UA.

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So we're going to make sure that it's done in a way that represents our community.

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And it should be just a beautiful facility when it's done.

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It'S going to blend in. Well, not be an eyesore.

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No, it'll blend in.

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It's going to have two buildings next to it that are seven stories.

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So it's going to not be the standalone hall building.

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There's a building, the condo building across the street, that's five or six storey.

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So it's not going to stand out

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as much as people think because they hear the heights and they get a little nervous.

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But there's other buildings going to be around that are tall, but

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it's really going to be a focal point one way or the other.

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We have two main areas of retail office in our community.

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It's Kingsdown. It's Lane Avenue to me.

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Lane Avenue is our main street. It's where our business is done.

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It's where most people who are coming into the community are going to go there the

18:57

shop or office or live that relationship to Ohio State 315.

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And then you have Kingsdale, which Kingsdale is kind of.

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I view it as the heartbeat of our community.

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You go there for your groceries, for restaurants, for OSU.

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Wexners got a facility there, so your medical needs.

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Now you put the community center there. It's just really is going to be the heartbeat of our community.

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If you live in UAE, you're probably going to go to Kingsville a couple of times a week just for daily life.

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And that's pretty exciting to me.

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So one final question, he's got this worried look on his face a little bit.

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Never know where David is going to go.

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Why the Trivillage Chamber Partnership?

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Why the Trivillage Chamber Partnership? That's a good question,

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but I think it's easy being able to have access to the business community.

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And for me to have one voice from

19:50

those businesses is important and to know when there's something that

19:55

the city needs and we need to hear from the business community.

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We can go to David and get an email out to the businesses and meet with them.

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And some of these, whether it's a morning perk or lunch in or some of the

20:07

programming that we do, it's important to me.

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I really want to have my ear to the ground

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to what's happening in our business community. And for me, Trivial Chamber is how we do it.

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It really is the voice of the business community.

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It's the loudest one in Upper Arlington,

20:26

in Grandview and Marble Cliff, and I think it's getting it right.

20:31

I think we've done a good thing with the Chamber.

20:34

I started. I think my first week here, the UA Chamber collapsed or folded.

20:39

And a couple of weeks later, we heard that

20:42

the businesses in the upper Chamber and the Grandview were in talks, and then we

20:46

did the merger, and there was, I think, some

20:49

nervous energy on both sides of the table to know how this relationship would go.

20:53

And I'm one of the few people on the board who has been there since the beginning of this merger.

20:58

And it's a beautiful thing.

21:01

We're one community in our business aspect and real residents.

21:05

Most people don't know which one of the communities are in, whether they're going to restaurants or

21:09

shopping, for us all to have one voice and to be

21:13

working together to make our region our corner of Columbus stronger.

21:17

It's a good thing. It's enjoyable.

21:20

We have great business leaders in the Chamber and in our community, and they all get along

21:26

and especially with the Chamber there to make sure we all play well in the sandbox.

21:31

But, yeah, it really does

21:34

represent our business community and really would push any business that is not

21:37

a Chamber member or had been in the past, and for whatever reason, decided not to

21:42

be, whether it's through Covett or whether it was a part of the old Chamber, and they

21:45

just didn't know what this new Chamber would look like.

21:47

It's been five years now.

21:50

We're running strong. We've got a great leadership with David.

21:54

He just led a $20 bill across the table if anybody didn't see that and paying me to

21:59

say that, but I'm excited to see where we go.

22:04

I think I look at the board for the Chamber and what David has done

22:08

over the last couple of years and a half now.

22:12

It will be two years in January. 2 years in January.

22:15

I'm excited. And so I think we're going to

22:17

see some great things moving forward with the Chamber.

22:21

All right. Congratulations on the success.

22:24

I'm looking forward to the future, too, because it's exciting and

22:27

just to see the growth going on in the trigger, really a huge asset.

22:32

So Congratulations. Thank you.

22:35

I'm sure I'll see you soon. Definitely.

22:37

All right. Trip Village. Thanks for listening.