Central Ohio won the largest economic development award in state history, gas prices hit record highs and big-name businesses set up shop here.
Add it all up, and 2022 is a big year for Columbus-area businesses.
How much do you know about what’s going on in the business world? Test your knowledge with this quiz (answers below).
- Which company announced in January that it would invest $20 billion in Liking County, the largest economic development project in the state’s history?
- Which automaker says it will build a $3.5 billion factory in Fayette County to make electric vehicle batteries?
- Which Grandview Heights school supply and craft stores closed last summer after 90 years in business?
- Which utility company intentionally cut power to many Columbus communities in June to prevent widespread blackouts after storms and heat waves?
- Which famous Columbus family got state approval to turn part of their Darby Dan farm into a solar farm?
- Which local bagel shop is being sued by Block’s Bagels for allegedly violating multiple terms of its license and supply agreement?
- Which international e-commerce giant has opened a clothing retail store in Easton Town Center where Forever 21 once occupied?
- How many Max & Erma locations are left in Central Ohio?
- Which luxury fashion house is returning to Columbus for the first time in over 30 years?
- Gasoline prices in central Ohio hit record highs in 2022. How high do they rise?
- Researching where to locate a possible Amtrak stop in Columbus?
- Which renewable fuel contained in Unleaded 88 is gaining popularity in Central Ohio?
- Which month in central Ohio hit the hottest 90 degrees in more than two decades?
- Both Intel and Honda have pledged to make their new factories in central Ohio carbon neutral. What methods will they use to help them do this?
- The developer of a 31-storey building next to North Market has chosen a name for the site. What is it?
- Which developer built a 20-foot Slingshot on the corner of Sullivant Avenue and Lucas Street in Franklinton next to the River & Rich development?
- Columbus developer Edward Cos. Approval has been granted for an elevated, plant-covered, three-block-long sidewalk in downtown. What is the sidewalk modeled after?
- Which Columbus hotel now has 1,000 rooms and is the largest in the state after completing an expansion in the fall?
- What is the name of the coffee chain where workers at some stores, including Columbus, began to unionize?
- What Prohibition-era concepts continue to reverberate in Columbus?
- Which Central Ohio company announced in July that it was laying off more than 600 people?
- What does California-based Hyperion Cos. plan to employ 700 workers at its Far West Side factory to build?
- Which major retailer re-entered the mid-Ohio market in November after disappearing for 20 years?
- Workers at a major Columbus retailer were on the brink of a strike in September?
- What problems are customers at Columbus-based Bread Financial facing over the summer?
Answer
- Intel is building two factories, called fabs, that will employ 3,000 workers by 2025 when they start producing semiconductors.
- The Honda battery factory will help the automaker transition to electric vehicles.
- Star Beacon Products, a go-to supplier of school supplies and crafts, has also fallen victim to the pandemic.
- AEP said it had just a few minutes to decide which Columbus neighborhoods would be without power after being ordered to reduce demand to prevent the outage from spreading.
- The 2,400-acre Pleasant Prairie Solar Project planned for the townships of Pleasant and Prairie includes 900 acres from the Galbreath family’s Darby Dan farm.
- Block’s Bagels, founded in 1967, accused Fox boss Jeremy Fox of breaching a 10-year supply agreement that began in 2016.
- Amazon opened its second Amazon-inspired store in Easton Town Center in October.
- One was Lancaster after the Reynoldsburg factory closed.
- Italian luxury fashion house Gucci opened Easton Town Center in July, its first location in Columbus after the Columbus Downtown Mall closed in the early 1990s.
- According to AAA, it was $5.07 a gallon on June 8. Prices have since dropped back to around $3 a gallon.
- Greater Columbus Convention Center. It’s part of a plan to connect Ohio’s four largest metro areas: Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.
- Lead-free 88 is 15% ethanol. The growth surge in Central Ohio was due to the arrival of Sheetz more than a year ago.
- Ten days in June saw temperatures reach 90 degrees, the highest since 1999.
- Offset your company’s electricity use by using carbon credits that fund renewable energy projects.
- 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 playfulness that makes us the artists we are.”
- The walkway, which runs from South Third Street through South Fourth Street to the Youth Street parking lot, is modeled after New York City’s High Line elevated road.
- The new 28-story Hilton Columbus Downtown tower completed in the fall.
- Workers at Starbucks on the corner of Broad Street and Third Street Downtown, in Westerville and on the Ohio State University campus were among workers nationwide who voted to unionize.
- Behind walk-in freezers or in secret stairwells, speakeasies are growing in popularity locally.
- OhioHealth announced 637 layoffs, the most among its information technology employees and the largest single layoff for the company.
- Hyperion plans to build hydrogen fuel cells at the former Dispatch printing plant at 5300 Crosswinds Drive.
- After closing two stores in central Ohio in 2002, BJ’s Wholesale Club opened a store at 5900 N. Hamilton Road near New Albany and plans to open another in Orange Township, Delaware County.
- Thousands of Kroger workers are on the verge of striking ahead of a new contract.
- Bread customers lost access to their credit card account information.
Contributing reporters Jim Weiker, Taijuan Moorman, Erica Thompson and Patrick Cooley contributed to this report.
mawilliams@dispatch.com
@BizMarkWilliams