Title: From L Brands to Land Baron: How Les Wexner Built a Silicon Heartland
Content:
The story of how the 86-year-old quietly engineered one of the biggest semiconductor projects in history
Introduction:
In the summer of 2021, farmers and homeowners in the quiet rural community of Johnstown, Ohio began getting knocks on their doors and letters in their mailboxes. Representatives from the New Albany Company wanted to option their properties. The company was offering to pay upfront for the right to buy hundreds of acres of land and homes right in the center of the 5,000-resident town. The terms were generous: New Albany would pay about 50% above market rate if the sales went through and, if not, the owners would still keep the upfront payments. The catch: they all had to sign non-disclosure agreements.
"We were in the hospital with Covid-19 when we got the letter," says Beth Howard Hall, one of the homeowners approached by the firm.
Hall says she was offered $5,000 to option her home on 10 acres. She was later paid $1.3 million for the property, one of at least 21 residents to sell for $1 million or more. Pig farmers James and Katherine Heimerl pocketed $20 million for their more than 200 acres.
"We did not know what was going on with the land at the time," adds Hall.
A few months later, the mystery was solved. Tech giant Intel announced in January 2022 that it would build two semiconductor factories in the area, spending $20 billion and bringing 7,000 construction jobs and 3,000 full-time jobs to this rural patch just outside Columbus. Johnstown beat out bids from 38 other sites in every major state for the project, Ohio's biggest private sector deal ever. When he attended the ground-breaking in September 2022, President Biden described it as "one of the most significant science and technology investments in our history."
When local leaders didn't have a site that fit the ultra specific conditions needed for chip production, which include access to millions of gallons of water a day, they reached out to Wexner's New Albany Company.
Within three days, it had come up with a proposal for the plot in Johnstown. "It wouldn't have happened without them," says J.P. Nauseef, the CEO of JobsOhio, the state's private economic development group, which rustled up a $150 million grant that paid for the Intel land as part of a more than $2 billion incentive package.
It's been a particular boon for Wexner, who bought up 3,500 acres -- almost all in Licking County, which includes Johnstown and part of New Albany -- for an estimated $340 million beginning in 2022; he then turned around and sold 830 acres to Intel for about $120 million and another 1,700 to other firms like Amazon and Microsoft for $400 million.
According to a New Albany Company spokesperson, the company typically spends up to 30% to 50% of the cost of the land on, among other things, securing development entitlements and environmental permitting required to prepare land for development.
Wexner, through the New Albany Company, still owns about 1,000 acres of this land, worth an estimated $250 million, and at least 1,700 more acres across Central Ohio. In all, Wexner, who is worth $6 billion, is sitting on nearly $700 million in landholdings through the New Albany Company, according to Forbes' estimates.
This could be just the beginning. In March, President Biden announced that Intel will get $20 billion in grants and loans in the biggest award from the $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act he signed in 2022. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has said the new cash will supercharge a $100 billion semiconductor spending spree to expand its existing campuses across
