Amazon Warehouse in New Albany, Ohio

America’s Fastest Growing City

Fly With The Wind / McCoy Tyner

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In 2015, Steph and I moved to New Albany, Ohio on the Northeast side of Columbus, Ohio. It was not my first time in Columbus. I lived in the Upper Arlington and Grandview parts of Columbus from 2002 to 2012. Now, our here on the Northeast side of the big 270 outerbelt.

Where everything seems to be happening at once. (Like the title to that movie). Intel’s decision to build their state-of-the-art chip plant is the largest investment in the history of Ohio. The plant is perhaps three miles east of our home in New Albany. All of the great tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook have huge buildings on a new wide boulevard cut through the Ohio cornfields. Farmers all around selling their farms and becoming a new type of wealthy class in the state. The great changes in the Ohio countryside and the farms that made it what it was, what so many remembered what it was.

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Since arriving in New Albany in 2015, it’s incredible about the growth I’ve seen. And I grew up in the Los Angeles of the 1950s. And later, the Dayton, Ohio and New York City of the 1960s. Out here on the far Northeast side of the growing Columbus. It is incredible growth. A park I walked my greyhound in was converted into a huge apartment complex in the downtown part of New Albany.

New buildings in downtown New Albany. All fitting into the Georgian theme required by the cities’s code. A Disney quality to the town in many ways. Unified in architecture like no other suburb I had ever lived in. I had lived in a few. It was something of a magic city.

Facebook in New Albany

Steph and I started visiting her parents in New Albany and Stephanie fell in love with the town. I was pretty close behind her based on all the visits we made from California to Ohio. We moved to New Albany in 2015 from Palm Desert, California. We purchased a home just a block from the downtown area of New Albany. Maybe five miles from the Northeast tip of the 270 Outerbelt around Columbus.

When we moved back in 2015, there were just farms east of New Albany. Mostly corn but a lot of soy beans. The land had been farmed this way for a few hundred years. A rhythm of life created from all of this as it always is within the action of farmer and land. Why is this so hard to realize? Or visualize? See?

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Close enough to the great city yet far enough away from it at the same time. Somewhat in the position of the Canadian media observer Marshall McLuhan to American culture in the 1960s and why he was able to analyze the context of American culture by talking about that new word medium. Americans never suspected all of this. As McLuhan once used a metaphor, the Americans were like fish in water. As McLuhan liked to add, although we’re not sure who discovered water, we’re sure it wasn’t fish.

And maybe it was somewhat like this for Stephanie and me living out here in New Albany for the past nine years, watching from the outside so to speak, as Columbus continued to grow. It seemed to be doing everything so right. There of course was the central logistical position of Columbus as a hub. There was also the incredible research from Columbus via Batelle and OSU. And, of course the growth of the OSU medical complex and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the nation’s largest. Columbus.

Combining such a key mix of government, insurance and education as key economic pillars of the growing mega-city of Columbus. Not to mention the Buckeye football team and other Buckeye sports teams. Any city requires a certain image from having the nation’s greatest college football team. It has been this way forever and will continue to be this way.

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Out here in New Albany, I’ve been introduced to a number of interesting entrepreneurs through incredible places like Innovate New Albany run by my friend Neil Collins. I’ve been involved in a number of groups of entrepreneurs that tried to get information across. In Oakland. Berkeley. San Francisco. Then LA. All these groups are nothing compared to what Neil is promoting in the name of business growth in our community of New Albany.

Over the years I make many trips into Columbus from New Albany. I’m amazed at how much the city changes each time I venture back inside the 270 outerbelt of Columbus. It’s interesting how the various suburbs of Columbus seem to rotate around the 270 outerbelt. Their popularity coming and going.

If Columbus, Ohio is rated as the fastest growing city in the nation, than I am fairly certain that our community of New Albany is also one of the fastest growing suburbs but most importantly, business hubs in the nation. Certainly the center of the greatest investment in Ohio in history.

Right now, they are expanding 161 off of 270 by a number of lanes in preparation for the onslaught of making New Albany, very likely, the heart of some new tech renaissance in America. Living here for nine years I can certainly say New Albany should get some type of award. It has already received the Best Small Town in America Award from Inside Business Magazine.

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Yet what will ultimately be in store for New Albany and our life here?

This is the thing about growth.

That which you consider memorable and beautiful in the past is often destroyed. Replaced by concrete, windowless buildings. (LA in the 50s) You lose what you thought was beautiful in the past. As the great city of Columbus continues to change and grow.

The city has elected a strong mayor and city council who have proved a forceful group in negotiations on the city’s behalf. New Albany has created one of the greatest Business Parks in the history of almost any other city. This is a true accomplishment by itself.

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When friends and family visit us back here in New Albany, I take drive them on 161 maybe three miles east to the big turnoff for all the tech companies. A wide boulevard with vast Facebook buildings to the left and the huge Amazon warehouse to the right and then farther down, the gate to Google. Then, farther east onto the next road, I get off and give my tour towards the site of the new Intel plant.

Many farmers were of course bought out by Intel for huge gains for the rights to create their chip plant in the Ohio countryside just Northeast of Columbus.

American’s fastest growing city. This phrase is a little hard to believe I’m sure by older Columbus people who knew it as cowtown. One of its’ nicknames.

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And now, the city something so much more than this it seems to me. Yet, still searching for her true identity it seems to me. Which is not a bad thing. I so much would rather meet a person on a search with their passions towards something searched for. Something in the future.

The grand age of exploration of the world might be over yet there were still individuals who served as explorers on expeditions of discovery. But the great explorations today are not over vast stretches of American geography. These no longer exist on the earth.

Rather, exploration is about that vast geography of the person. The geography of the personal psyche. Much more vast than any physical geography.

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Downtown New Albany / Still in the Country but for How Long

Maybe someone will define our time here in New Albany in 2024. Watching from a distance, the growth of Columbus, Ohio. Like we have been watching this. Such a change for Columbus and Central Ohio.

But why? Might there be some larger reason to all of this? Another piece of the puzzle?

This particular place. The center in the historic state of Ohio.

My town of New Albany. In the middle of all this.

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Steph and me. In New Albany. In the middle of all this. Many others out there of my generation. In the middle of all of this.

Is there a message to be taken from all this growth in central Ohio while so many other cities around the nation are rift with riots and non-functional systems losing millions of taxpayers money? Maybe no message but it seems that Columbus is so insulated from many of the trends that often draw cities off course. Columbus has her foundation in education, government, insurance. Now, technology. A focus on central Ohio as the new technology center of the nation. Is there some brand message to other suburb cities, expressing their growth and freedom like New Albany.

I wonder if there is some way that my town of New Albany can establish communication with other American suburbs or cities next to the nation’s largest cities. Especially, next to the nation’s fastest growing cities. Like Columbus. And like New Albany. Six miles from the Northeast off ramp of 161 going east.

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New Albany Countryside Next to Tech Giants

What actions might New Albany be an observer or participant in creating a particular future? I think that towns possess their own biographies and I attempted to write one for the town of Palm Desert California. The work was created in association with the Palm Desert Historical Society.

Is there someone who might write the story of this incredible time we live in? Out here in New Albany as the great Intel plant goes up. Fifty story cranes over the Ohio countryside as far as the eye can see. Or, does it really matter if anyone tells it?