Central Ohio wins the state’s biggest economic development prize in history, gasoline prices hit all-time highs and famous businesses set up shop here.
Add it up and 2022 was a big year for business in the Columbus area.
How well do you know what’s happening in the business world? Test your knowledge with this quiz (answers below).
- What company announced in January that it would invest $20 billion in Licking County, the biggest economic development project in state history?
- What automaker said it would build a $3.5 billion plant in Fayette County to make batteries for electric vehicles?
- What Grandview Heights school-supplies and craft store was closed last summer after 90 years in business?
- What power company intentionally shut off electricity to many Columbus neighborhoods in June to keep power outages from spreading after a severe storm and then a heat wave?
- What well-known Columbus family has received state approval to turn part of Darby Dan Farm into a solar farm?
- Which local bagel shop is being sued by Block’s Bagels for allegedly violating several terms of a licensing and supply agreement?
- What international e-commerce giant opened a clothing retail store in Easton Town Center, in a space once occupied by Forever 21?
- How many Max & Erma’s locations are left in central Ohio?
- Which luxury fashion house returned to Columbus for the first time in over 30 years?
- Gasoline prices in central Ohio hit an all-time high in 2022. How high did they get?
- What location is being studied for a possible Amtrak stop in Columbus?
- What renewable fuel that is included in unleaded 88 is growing in popularity in central Ohio?
- Which month hit the highest mark for 90-degree days in central Ohio in more than two decades?
- Intel and Honda have both pledged to achieve carbon neutrality with their new factories in central Ohio. What is one method they will use to help them do that?
- Developers of a 31-story building next to the North Market have picked a name for the site. What is it?
- What developer built a 20-foot-long slingshot at the corner of Sullivant Avenue and Lucas Street in Franklinton, next to the River & Rich development?
- Columbus developer Edward Cos. has received permission to build an elevated, plant-covered, three-block-long walkway Downtown. What is the walkway modeled after?
- What Columbus hotel now has 1,000 rooms, the largest in the state, after an expansion that was completed during the fall?
- What is the name of the coffee shop chain where workers in some stores, including Columbus, began to organize into a union?
- What Prohibition-era concept continues to reverberate in Columbus?
- What central Ohio company announced in July that it was laying off more than 600 workers?
- California-based Hyperion Cos. plans to employ 700 workers in a Far West Side factory to build what?
- What big-box retailer re-entered the central Ohio market in November after being gone for two decades?
- Workers at what major Columbus retailer came to the brink of a strike in September?
- Customers of Columbus-based Bread Financial faced what problem over the summer?
Answers
- Intel is building two factories, called fabs, that will employ 3,000 workers when it begins producing semiconductors in 2025.
- The Honda battery plant will help the automaker transition to electric vehicles.
- Star Beacon Products, the go-to place for school supplies and arts-and-crafts materials, fell victim to the pandemic.
- American Electric Power says it had only a few minutes to decide which Columbus neighborhoods would lose power after being ordered to reduce demand to keep outages from spreading.
- The 2,400-acre Pleasant Prairie Solar Energy project planned for Pleasant and Prairie townships includes 900 acres from Darby Dan Farm belonging to the Galbreath family.
- Block’s Bagels, founded in 1967, alleged that Fox’s owner Jeremy Fox violated a 10-year supply agreement originating in 2016.
- Amazon opened its second Amazon Style location in Easton Town Center in October.
- One, in Lancaster, after the Reynoldsburg location closed.
- Italian luxury fashion house Gucci opened at Easton Town Center in July, its first location in Columbus after closing at Columbus City Center mall in the early 1990s.
- $5.07 per gallon on June 8, according to AAA. Prices have fallen since, back to around $3 per gallon.
- The Greater Columbus Convention Center. It is part of a plan that would connect Ohio’s four largest metropolitan areas: Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.
- Unleaded 88 is 15{1b90e59fe8a6c14b55fbbae1d9373c165823754d058ebf80beecafc6dee5063a} ethanol. The surge in growth in central Ohio is due to the arrival of Sheetz more than a year ago.
- Temperatures hit 90 degrees on 10 days in June, the most since 1999.
- Through the use of carbon credits that fund renewable energy projects to offset the use of electricity by the companies.
- The $300 million project is called the Merchant Building.
- Casto. Franklinton artist Andrew Lundberg, who runs Lundberg Industrial Arts, designed the Franklinton Slingshot as “a visual reminder of our momentum as a community while maintaining the mischievous nature of the artists that make us who we are.”
- The walkway, running from South Third Street over South Fourth Street and into the Young Street parking garage, is modeled after New York City’s High Line elevated path.
- The Hilton Columbus Downtown’s new 28-story tower was finished in the fall.
- Workers at the Starbucks on the corner of Broad and Third streets Downtown, in Westerville and on the Ohio State University campus are among workers nationwide who have voted to unionize.
- Behind walk-in freezers or down secret stairwells, speakeasies have continued to grow in popularity locally.
- OhioHealth announced that 637 workers, the most in its information technology workforce, was the company’s largest single layoff.
- Hyperion plans to build hydrogen fuel cells in the factory, in the former Dispatch printing plant, at 5300 Crosswinds Drive.
- BJ’s Wholesale Club opened a store at 5900 N. Hamilton Road near New Albany after closing two central Ohio locations in 2002, with another one planned in Orange Township in Delaware County.
- Thousands of Kroger workers were on the edge of striking before agreeing to a new contract.
- Bread customers could not access their credit card account information.
Dispatch Reporters Jim Weiker, Taijuan Moorman, Erica Thompson and Patrick Cooley contributed to this report.
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