Law firm adds office, will hire 50 workers

A Columbus law firm has opened an office at Wilmington Air Park and plans to hire up to 50 workers within the next several years.

The move by the law offices of Robert A. Schuerger Co. is being presented by the Clinton County Port Authority as one step toward replacing the jobs lost in the departure of an air hub for Amazon.

The law office, which opened in February with an initial staff of about a dozen workers, is the first outside

Columbus for Schuerger Co., whose specialties include debt collection and government compliance.

James Sisto, chief legal officer for Schuerger, said one advantage is that hiring workers in the Wilmington area qualifies Schuerger for potential preference in government contracts under the Small Business Administration’s HubZone certification program.

“We had a need to service clients in that tristate area and this was a central location for that,” Sisto said. “The facility itself is great,” he said of the 4,400-square-foot building being leased from the port authority.

Most of the jobs at the office will be call-center workers, he said, along with a few lawyers.

Amazon announced Jan. 31 that it would base a cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Kentucky, after testing the hub on a smaller scale in Wilmington.

It’s the second time in a decade that a big distribution operation has left the Wilmington air park. German shipper DHL left in 2008. That resulted in the loss of about 8,000 jobs and the ceding of the air park from DHL to the port authority.

According to notices filed with the state, Amazon’s decision to move its hub will result in 335 jobs lost.

Daniel Evers, executive director of the port authority, said about a dozen companies have operations at the air park, employing about 1,200 people. The port authority still has 1.5 million square feet of space available for lease, he said.