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OSU Starts Work on 103,000-Square-Foot Innovation District Tower
Ohio State held a groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 20 for an eight-story building near Lane Avenue and Kenny Road. The project is backed in part by a donation from alumnus and software entrepreneur Ratmir Timashev and is intended to bring students, researchers and companies together.
Ohio State University has broken ground on an eight-story, 103,000-square-foot building near the intersection of Lane Avenue and Kenny Road. The university is calling the project Timashev Technology Tower, and a groundbreaking ceremony took place Oct. 20.
The tower will be built between the Pelotonia Research Center on Kenny Road and the Energy Advancement and Innovation Center at Lane Avenue and Kenny Road. It is part of OSU’s 350-acre West Campus Innovation District, where the university and its affiliated Science and Technology Campus Corporation have also discussed future housing and retail development.
A portion of a $110 million gift made to Ohio State in 2023 by alumnus Ratmir Timashev and his wife, Angela, through the Timashev Family Foundation will support the tower and educational programming for the Center for Software Innovation, which will be among the building’s tenants.
Timashev, a software entrepreneur, said the gift is meant to help prepare students for changes in artificial intelligence, innovation and life sciences. He also described an ambition for Columbus and Central Ohio to become a major technology hub.
OSU President Ravi Bellamkonda said the building is planned as a shared environment for startups, larger companies, students, researchers and employees. The mix, he said, is intended to encourage collaboration across those groups.
Ohio Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel, JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef, a fourth-year biomedical engineering student and Timashev also spoke at the ceremony. The university has not provided a construction cost or completion date in the information released about the groundbreaking.