COLUMBUS—On Monday evening, Nationwide Realty Investors unveiled its latest development plan for Grandview Yard in a meeting with members of Grandview Heights City Council. Located on the former Big Bear warehouse site and encompassing nearly 100 acres, Grandview Yard will eventually include up to 2-million-square-feet of commercial space. The new plans call for a 500,000-square-foot campus for Columbus-based Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. that would support more than 3,000 employees, a 135-room hotel and a 13,000-square-foot conference center.
“We're pleased to have had the opportunity to present our plans to City Council and Grandview Heights,” says NRI president and chief operating officer Brian J. Ellis. “This is a great community and the proposed projects represent a tremendous opportunity for Nationwide and its associates, Grandview Heights and Grandview Yard.”
The new campus would sit along Yard St. between Goodale Blvd. and Third Ave., and include three, four-story interconnected office buildings with three adjacent four-level parking structures. Grandview Heights is about two miles from downtown. The first building would include 320,000-square-feet of space and NRI would like to finish it by 2016. The 160,000-square-foot second building would follow in 2017, and the third building in 2019.
“This proposal represents a great win for our entire community, both the City of Grandview Heights and the overall Grandview area,” says council president Anthony Panzera. “We are thrilled that Nationwide is willing to make this commitment and we look forward to working closely with NRI to finalize the details.”
The hotel and conference center would also open in 2016 at the intersection of Goodale Blvd. and Yard St. NRI, the real estate arm of Nationwide, would own the hotel and Columbus Hospitality, which also operates the Hyatt Place hotel at Grandview Yard, would operate it. Furthermore, NRI wants a new 2.5-acre public park that will function as a neighborhood gathering place for both the project and the Grandview Heights community. It would feature gently sloping topography, natural stone retaining walls and extensive landscaping.
Nationwide's Dublin and Westerville offices have pending lease expirations and last week company officials said that about 3,600 employees currently located in these offices would transition to either the new Grandview Yard campus or Nationwide's downtown offices in the Arena District over the next five years. About 3,000 will move to Grandview Yard and 600 to the downtown. Once the company completes the moves, Nationwide will have more than 10,000 employees in downtown Columbus.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
