The New Albany Company has extended its development arm beyond Franklin and Licking counties to Muskingum County.
The company – which transformed the sleepy farming village into a major Columbus suburb and economic engine that includes the New Albany International Business Park in the years following its 1987 founding by billionaire retailer Les Wexner and developer Jack Kessler – is marketing a 664-acre site in western Muskingum County.
Just across the eastern edge of Licking County, the flat farmland being marketed as the “Graham Farm Business Park” is south of Rt. 16, north of an active rail line and bisected by a Rt. 16 interchange with Rt. 586, high-voltage AEP power lines and a high-pressure natural gas line.
“The New Albany Company is actively developing 664 acres of prime industrial land in Frazeysburg, less than an hour from Columbus,” the company says on its website.
“Developed in collaboration with the state of Ohio and the Zanesville-Muskingum County Port Authority, Graham Farm is within a day’s drive of nearly half the U.S. population,” the website says. “The park is a short drive from Intel’s $28-billion semiconductor chip complex under construction, and the New Albany International Business Park, home to more than 60 tenants, including Meta, Google, Amgen, Amazon Web Services, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Pharmavite.”
Despite all of its amenities, two things the Muskingum County site lacked were water and sewer service. In July 2025, the Ohio Department of Development announced announced grants totalling nearly $80 million for water, sewer and road projects to spur commercial and industrial development on nearly 1,200 acres in Muskingum County and more than 1,000 acres around the former American Electric Power Conesville power plant in Coshocton County.
The Coshocton County Port Authority was awarded $58,752,504 in support of the Conesville Industrial Park project. The funding is being used for roadwork, utility upgrades, and water and wastewater improvements to help prepare the site for future development. The Conesville Industrial Park is marketing 2,500 acres formerly occupied by AEP’s Conesville Power Plant and adjacent mining operations. Among the companies moving into that park is Aligned Data Centers, which is building a hyper-scale data center there now.
The Zanesville-Muskingum Port Authority was awarded $20,701,384 to provide water and sanitary access to 600 acres in Jackson Township, within the Frazeysburg development area. The funding will support new public water and wastewater infrastructure to serve the site, including a water treatment plant and a wastewater treatment plant.
The grants were among more than $225 million awarded through the “All Ohio Future Fund” to improve infrastructure at sites in Coshocton, Lorain, Montgomery and Muskingum counties.
| Read more: Grants of nearly $80 million could help lure new jobs to Muskingum and Coshocton counties – and bookend Licking County with big developments
“We are aware of the private acquisition of actively marketed property in Frazeysburg by the Frazeysburg Land Company,” Amy Young, a business development specialist with the Zanesville-Muskingum County Port Authority, said in a statement. “At this time, there are no development plans to announce. We remain focused on attracting new investment and supporting existing businesses to strengthen the Muskingum County economy.”
The New Albany Company’s website says that an on-site municipal water treatment plant being built now will have “excess capacity of 2 to 3 million gallons a day” with a projected completion date in 2028.
“The Frazeysburg Land Company (an affiliate of The New Albany Company) owns or controls 664 acres in the area, including a 217-acre parcel bounded by State Route 16 and State Route 586 (Black Run Road), on which it recently closed,” the New Albany Company said in a statement. “There are no immediate development plans to announce at this time.”
As described on the website of JobsOhio, the state development office, “the Muskingum County development site is a flat, unique +/-664-acre site with excellent access to State Route 16.”
The website also notes that “additional acreage may be available up to 1,180 total.” It also says that Jackson Township, where the land is located, is an unzoned community. “Therefore, no zoning code applicable to the proposed site. As a result, the project could be developed without complying with any zoning regulations.”
This Muskingum County land was part of a vision by the late basket-weaver turned home-goods mogul Dave Longaberger to create a basket-themed attraction stretching from the seven-story, basket-shaped home office in Newark deep into his home county to the east.
Eric Reed, executive director of the Zanesville Muskingum County Port Authority, said a year ago that the nearly $20.1 million state grant was a game-changer in marketing the site to developers.
He said then that the land had been on the market for several years but received little traction from potential buyers because it lacked water and sewer service.
Reed said at the time of the grant that it would take at least a year to develop plans for the water and sewer lines before construction can begin. Muskingum County currently has five other business parks, but this one has the potential to be the largest when built out.
“That area is prime for development,” he said last year. “With infrastructure in place and access to roadways and housing, it’s a great opportunity.”
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.