Proposed mall nearby creates job possibilities for Morrow Countians

By Randa Wagner -

There’s good news brew­ing for job hunters in Mor­row County.

Simon Prop­erty Group, Inc., the world’s lead­ing retail real estate com­pany and Tanger Fac­tory Out­let Cen­ters, Inc. announced Nov. 28 they plan to develop two new upscale out­let cen­ters in Char­lotte, N.C. and Colum­bus, OH.

The 350,000 square foot Ohio cen­ter will be located off of the Inter­state 71/Ohio 37/U.S. 36 (Sun­bury) inter­change — close enough to Mor­row County to attract local job seekers.

“It will help Mor­row County because there will be a lot of job oppor­tu­ni­ties for our cit­i­zens,” said Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden. “Unfor­tu­nately Mor­row County was never given an oppor­tu­nity to make an offer to them. Had we known they were look­ing to locate in cen­tral Ohio, we would have aggres­sively pur­sued that.”

The out­let will be branded as Tanger Out­lets, and Simon Prop­erty Group expects this cen­ter to have its grand open­ing in time for the 2014 hol­i­day sea­son. When com­pleted, the cen­ter will be home to more than 90 upscale brand name and designer out­let stores.

“We are pleased to part­ner with Tanger to bring great out­let shop­ping to both Char­lotte and Colum­bus,” said John R. Klein, Pres­i­dent of Simon’s Pre­mium Out­lets plat­form, in the press release. “Both of these projects pro­vide the most com­pelling loca­tions for our mer­chants and our cus­tomers and will best serve the Char­lotte and Colum­bus com­mu­ni­ties. Our recent joint ven­ture in Texas City, Texas has got­ten off to a great start and we look for­ward to devel­op­ing two more suc­cess­ful projects together.”

Simon Prop­erty Group says both new projects are expected to cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic impact and many oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ment. Dur­ing each center’s approx­i­mately year-long build­ing phase, Tanger and Simon expect approx­i­mately 300 con­struc­tion jobs will be cre­ated at each site. The retail­ers are expected to employ more than 900 in full and part-time retail man­age­ment and sales jobs at each cen­ter when open.

Add the new Cabela’s (expected to open this Spring) under con­struc­tion at Polaris to the mix, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties rise.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Dec 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.