New Pataskala industrial development honors former farmer, city council member

Maria DeVito, Newark Advocate
Updated ·4 min read
The sign for Red Chip Farms, a 350-acre development within the Pataskala Corporate Park. The development is named after former land owner Howard "Red" Emswiler and former city council member Grover "Chip" Fraley.
The sign for Red Chip Farms, a 350-acre development within the Pataskala Corporate Park. The development is named after former land owner Howard "Red" Emswiler and former city council member Grover "Chip" Fraley.

After years of planning for industrial development, the city of Pataskala has officially entered a new phase. And in the process, it's recognizing two of the men who made it possible.

Pataskala celebrated the city corporate park's first large scale development, Red Chip Farms, by unveiling a sign June 28 that honors the two men after whom the development is named, former land owner Howard "Red" Emswiler and former City Council member Grover "Chip" Fraley.

With the 350-acre Red Chip development, Pataskala Mayor Mike Compton said the city is heading in a new direction.

"As the Heaths and Hebrons and the Johnstowns of the world are starting to see their day in the sun also, we’ve patiently waited and now it’s turning out to be our day," he said in an interview after the unveiling.

Pataskala Mayor Mike Compton speaks before the sign for Red Chip Farms is unveiled on June 28.
Pataskala Mayor Mike Compton speaks before the sign for Red Chip Farms is unveiled on June 28.

The development's first building, 3600 Etna Parkway, will be occupied by Illuminate USA, which announced in March it would invest $220 million to build one of the largest solar panel manufacturing factories in the U.S. inside a 1.1 million-square-foot factory. The project is expected to create 850 jobs.

The company is a new joint venture between renewable energy company Invenergy, a Chicago-based developer of several solar projects in Ohio, and Chinese solar panel manufacturer Longi.

Operations are expected to start by year-end. Illuminate USA is retrofitting the building to meet its needs, City Administrator Tim Hickin said after the unveiling.

The 520-acre Corporate Park, which starts at Ohio 16/Broad Street and Etna Parkway, was created in September 2011. And while it's home to Meyer Shank Racing, Hickin said the investment by Illuminate USA represents the next step for Pataskala's growth.

Compton said the city had to be patient as it waited for the corporate park to develop over the past decade. He said companies would often be interested in coming to Pataskala, but there was something lacking.

"We’d checked off all the boxes. We had everything but a building," he said.

But that changed in 2021, when South Carolina-based Red Rock Developments started constructing the corporate park's first speculative building. And now, Compton said, the city is "checking all the boxes" for companies looking to locate in central Ohio.

And Red Rock is not done in Pataskala. The developer will build two more spec buildings just across Etna Parkway from Illuminate USA. Of these two new structures, which will be located on about 96 acres, one will be 445,536 square feet and the other 470,288 square feet. Red Rock is also constructing another building on Mink Street.

The core area of the Red Chip development was owned by Emswiler and his wife, Rosemary. Red Emswiler was a lifelong farmer and operated Emswiler Farms since 1955. At one point, the family farmed about 6,500 acres in Licking County.

He worked closely with Fraley, prior to Fraley's death in 2008, to make the corporate park a reality. Their partnership and friendship led to the development being named in their honor, said John Barker, Red Rock's president and chief development officer, to the people gathered June 28.

Red Emswiler just missed seeing the sign that honors him. He died April 26.

Members of the Emswiler stand in front of the sign for Red Chip Farms, a 350-acre development within the Pataskala Corporate Park. The land was previously owned by Howard "Red" Emswiler.
Members of the Emswiler stand in front of the sign for Red Chip Farms, a 350-acre development within the Pataskala Corporate Park. The land was previously owned by Howard "Red" Emswiler.

His daughter, Mary Ann Vickner, said in an interview it was important to Emswiler to bring employment opportunities to the city he called home.

"He just kind of envisioned it would just be a place for people to raise their kids, work good paying jobs and have everything they need right here and not have to go anywhere else." she said.

Compton said the city has so much to offer people with its seven community parks, variety of restaurants and mom and pop stores, higher education institution in the Central Ohio Technical College Pataskala campus and larger retailers like Kroger and Tractor Supply Co. But he said Pataskala has been missing a larger employer that can help fund the city's income tax to improve infrastructure, sustain the police department and fund other city services to keep up with Pataskala's growth.

That's not the case anymore thanks to Red Chip Farms, he said.

"It’s kind of an opportunity for us to complete a vision of having a community that’s got it all," he said.

mdevito@gannett.com

740-607-2175

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Pataskala enters new phase with corporate park development