6 minute read
Business: The Great Expansion
THE GREAT EXPANSION
Central Ohio businesses are expanding inside a flourishing ecosystem that drives and supports growth across all sectors.
LAUREN CULLEY AND JEFF EXCELL
Fox in the Snow Café | Owners | Moved here in 2014 from Brooklyn, New York
Economic growth in the Columbus Region isn’t just about attracting new business. It’s also helping existing companies continue to grow.
Timothy J. Miller, Ph.D., president and co-founder of Forge Biologics, says the Columbus Region boasts many assets that propel the kind of expansion his company has experienced, including a talented workforce and exemplary academic, health and science centers—along with strong public-private partnerships.
“We have one of the youngest, most well-educated populations, anchored by Ohio State [University] and Nationwide Children’s Hospital,” Miller says. Innovative investors like Drive Capital, which helped finance Forge from the outset, also shape a robust environment. “They all make up a recipe for success.”
Headquartered in Grove City, Forge is a hybrid contract manufacturing and development company that aims to accelerate gene therapy programs from preclinical through clinical and commercial stage manufacturing. Its focus is on viral vectors used in genetic therapy for people, including children, with rare diseases.
Just two years since its inception, Forge has raised more than $240 million in financing, including a $40 million Series A financing in 2020 and a $120 million Series B round in 2021.
“I didn’t anticipate raising Series A and B financing during a pandemic,” Miller says. Nevertheless, the company also grew to 240 employees and is on track to grow to 400 with help from a JobsOhio development grant facilitated by economic development organization One Columbus.
Forge is but one example of companies that chose to locate or expand in the Columbus Region in recent years, says Justin Bickle, managing director of client services and project management at One Columbus.
Bickle says One Columbus works to understand competing markets and present compelling cases for doing business here, helping make the necessary connections to support workforce development, academic affiliations, incentives, funding and community engagement. He adds that retaining successful businesses is just as important as attracting them.
For Quantum Health founder Kara Trott, Central Ohio was the obvious choice when she started the first healthcare navigation and care coordination company, now one of the largest in the nation. “Central Ohio is my home,” says Trott, who founded Quantum Health because she saw a need for a more consumercentric healthcare experience.
Others saw it, too, as evidenced by annual revenue growth rate of 25 percent and an expanding clientele base. Quantum is one of the 450 largest companies in the country and has more than 1,800 employees—a number is expected to grow to 2,000 next year, according to Trott.
When the company outgrew its Westerville headquarters in 2019, its leaders conducted a nationwide search before deciding to locate in Dublin, where it renovated a building formerly used by Ashland Chemical. Quantum purchased a second building as expansion continued.
“We like this campus environment,” Trott says, adding that incentives from the city of Dublin attracted her to the suburban community. The Quantum campus on Blazer Parkway currently has room for the new surge of employees expected in the coming months, she says.
Quantum, which had 650,000 members in 2017, now has more than 2 million and is climbing toward 2.5 million, Trott says. Its clientele is composed primarily of self-insured companies with between 5,000 and 25,000 employees, and in some cases many more, Trott says. “We cover 65 to 70 percent of all people who get benefits from employer-sponsored health plans.”
In the Columbus Region, growth begets growth, she says. The arrival of Intel, for example, will catalyze employment growth as new employees bring family members who also will join the local workforce talent pool. Bickle says the semiconductor industry is one of several rapidly growing sectors, including life sciences and automotive (think: electric vehicles) that will build on existing synergies and add depth to the Region’s ecosystem.
“The life sciences sector has exploded in the last four to five years. We are involved in the development of an ecosystem around the drive to capitalize,” Bickle says. As home to worldclass researchers, leading-edge biotechnology facilities and a growing investor base, the Region is creating a hub for excellence in biotech therapies.
The potential for a formidable commercial-life science alliance is evidenced by the billions of dollars’ worth of investments being made here, he says, citing Andelyn Biosciences, an affiliate of Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Andelyn, another contract manufacturing organization involved in viral vector production, broke ground earlier this year on a 185,000-square-foot facility in Columbus’ Innovation District, supported by a $5 million JobsOhio Research and Development Center grant. Andelyn also has received a significant privatesector investment.
Andelyn Biosciences was born out of groundbreaking work at Nationwide Children’s, where the first FDA-approved systemic gene therapy was developed. Andelyn combines the names Andrew and Evelyn, who were among the first children to receive experimental gene therapy there several years ago.
Erandi De Silva, Forge Biologics co-founder and senior vice president of product development, says the Region is rapidly becoming an epicenter for gene therapy and other biotech endeavors.
In addition to its own small clinical pipeline, Forge works with dozens of outside clients to accelerate the development and manufacture of viral vectors, and its 200,000-square-foot headquarters houses some of the world’s largest bioreactors. Forge is poised to become the largest dedicated adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector manufacturer in the world in the next few years, company leaders say.
“We’ve heard from many investors that this really is a big feather in Ohio’s cap,” De Silva says.
De Silva says Forge looked at 25 to 30 other sites before deciding to locate in Grove City. “They’ve been fantastic partners, from the mayor to the development department,” she says. Other assets included reasonably priced housing, proximity to the airport and building infrastructure. “They checked a lot of boxes for us and offered us an opportunity to grow.”
SUDARSHAN PYAKRUEL
Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio | Executive Director | Moved here in 2014 from Nepal via Cleveland, Ohio
