MOUNT VERNON — When Intel announced in January 2022 that it was coming to Licking County, a new word entered the local lexicon.
Virtually every discussion in the ensuing days included Intel. The company’s planned $20 billion investment — potentially $100 billion over a 10-year period — spawned many questions.
How will it affect Knox County? What should we do to prepare? What can we do?
Although there were many unknowns, everyone agreed on two things: Knox County will change, and it will grow.
How much and in what form remained to be seen.
Events moved swiftly.
Crews started revamping Licking County roads in March 2022. Intel finalized its purchase of 750 acres (now roughly 1,000 acres) in July 2022 and broke ground on the semiconductor facility two months later. Tech companies spent much of 2023 buying up land surrounding the Intel plant.
Local officials moved swiftly, too, although in a more measured way. The Area Development Foundation created an advisory committee to analyze and project Intel’s effect on Knox County.
One year after breaking ground, some ancillary buildings are up, rural roads have roundabouts, and the Intel site teems with construction equipment and trucks.
Locally, officials are absorbing the results of an economic growth strategy and beginning to proactively plan for a healthy, comprehensive response to Intel’s footprint.
Looking for answers
The advisory committee that ADF President Jeff Gottke convened included people from the sectors that Intel would most likely affect: housing, workforce and education, manufacturing, transportation, and government.
Expanding the circle to within a 40-mile drive time from Intel brought on board representatives from the villages and townships, law enforcement and safety services, and educational institutions.
“This is not a freakout, ‘oh, the tidal wave is coming.’ It’s more like ‘let’s set the table so that we are prepared.”
ADF President Jeff gottke
The committee also consulted Realtors, developers, and others.
“We did an internal assessment first,” Gottke explained. “We said, ‘Here’s how we think it will affect us.’ That would be more housing and transportation.
“Then we looked at ‘what are we doing that we can keep doing,’ and then ‘what are we not doing that we should be doing?’”
Gottke said the “keep doing” fell mostly under education, including workforce and technical education programs, and keeping communication lines open.
Other “keep-doing” things include planned infrastructure and housing projects already in the works.
“It quickly became obvious there were a lot of things that we should prepare for that we would need help with, particularly quantifying what we think growth will be and then identifying strategies to accommodate that,” Gottke said.
The committee brought in OHM Consultants to do a formal impact study. The Knox County commissioners and Knox Community Foundation paid for the study. The ADF coordinated it.
Solidly middle-class
The study confirmed some things county officials already knew or thought they knew. Confirmation includes the county’s agricultural base and the need for more housing.
The report also brings new information.
“We found that the county over the last 10 years has been growing faster than the state average, but not very fast,” Gottke said. “So the growth is still well within the county’s ability to absorb it.
“We don’t need to do expensive infrastructure or sewer or water plan upgrades. The roads can still handle the extra traffic. We don’t have to take more farmland and annex it.”
Gottke said that demographically, officials learned the county increased by 9 percent in the 65+ population and lost 5 percent in the 20-29 age group.
Income-wise, Gottke said the county’s median income is around $52,000 in comparison to the state’s $61,000.
“We’re a solidly middle-class, aging, mostly blue-collar county,” Gottke said.
The study also quantifies the demand for products and services. Demand is high, but the county does not meet all of that demand. Residents go outside of the county to buy more than $1.2 billion in products and services.
The report notes that finding ways to capture that $1.2 billion strengthens the county’s economic base, provides more jobs locally, and protects against downturns by diversifying the workforce.
The report’s business and workforce inventory can help capture that $1.2 billion. The inventories highlight existing businesses and skill sets. That provides a blueprint for determining what businesses the county needs to attract and what education and skill sets are needed for those new businesses.
Other new information points to how Intel’s footprint will impact different Knox County zip codes based on local decisions about zoning or how much growth they want.
What doesn’t the report say?
Gottke acknowledged there are some areas the study does not address, such as schools, safety services, and specifics on child care.
He noted, however, that several school districts are starting to plan for growth stemming from Intel. Additionally, the report provides data that ADF can extrapolate to study child care.
“It also doesn’t address what type of growth we want to be where. It doesn’t say where within those areas it will be or what [type] it will be,” Gottke said.
“It’s more of a ‘what’s possible’ vision. There will be a lot more details to work out, particularly in the comprehensive plan update.”
Recommendations
The report recommends action items in five categories: land use, infrastructure, economic development, incentives, and administration.
Gottke said the recommendations are more along the lines of “proactive measures to prepare the community to take advantage of growth.”
“They’re things we could do now that will be in place so that when growth shows up, we will be ready for it,” he said.
Completion time frames for the recommendations range from three months to five years.
What’s next?
The first step in Knox County’s Intel response is what Gottke calls the “roadshow.”
“The first step would be to present this strategy to the affected impacted jurisdictions,” he said. “I want to do the ‘roadshow’: Go to the trustees and the councils, Kiwanis, clubs — all of those entities that will be impacted by this — so everybody understands where we’ve been and where we could go.
“The big, visible effort, the number one thing, is to update the Knox County Comprehensive Plan,” he continued. “Doing that will then create multiple small individual efforts on the part of the municipalities and townships.”
Those individual efforts include looking at infrastructure and mapping zoning districts, for example.
“There are things that we are working on here at ADF that we started that will align with this plan, such as working with political jurisdictions to create housing attraction programs,” he said.
“It really is going to be about developing a vision for ourselves. That’s what the comprehensive plan does.”
Updating the comprehensive plan
The comprehensive plan is updated every five years, with the next update slated for this year. The Regional Planning Commission typically takes the lead in updating the plan. It delayed starting the process until OHM completed its strategy report.
Gottke said this update should focus more on land use rather than economic development.
To that end, RPC secretary Darrel Severns asked township trustees to create or update a land use planning map that can be included in the comprehensive plan.
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Because volunteers work with RPC on plan updates, it usually takes at least a year to complete. The Knox County commissioners have said a professional outside consultant should do this update so that it gets done in a timely manner.
The estimated cost is $100,000.
Over the upcoming days, Knox Pages will delve into the growth strategy report in greater detail. Topics include how townships can direct development, what businesses the county should attract to retain dollars spent outside of the county, and how education and businesses can work together to recruit, train, and retain a skilled workforce.
