2023: Our Year in Review

 

This year has been a huge one for Erin and me, and for our business, Cole's Aircraft. The business grew by exactly 50% over last year (2022), which is about exactly where we wanted to be - not too drastic, not too flat. We sold exactly 3,293 pieces of my art and grossed 1.28 million dollars. These figures certainly give me pause as an artist, reminding myself that while my days are filled with the necessary 'grunt work' of boxing orders, pairing labels, and ordering supplies - I'm still selling my own artwork to people who collect it. We're not investing in ever greater things based upon an inheritance, managing somebody else's invention, or outsourcing products to China. I create art, print it, sign it, and sell it. It's that simple, and that's pretty amazing to me. Anyone who is familiar with where I was thirty years ago, I'm frankly just happy to still be alive. In light of all of that, it's been a very good year. Our Cole's Aircraft Online Store

This year saw us commit to our largest project in the twelve-year history of our company. We purchased a 27,000-square foot commercial building in downtown Zanesville, Ohio. Built in 1926, this four-story historic structure was occupied by Montgomery Ward until 1974. We established a new 501(c)(3) non-profit company and donated the entire building to it, thus creating Cole Center Zanesville (CCZ) directly across from the Muskingum County Courthouse. While Cole's Aircraft will lease about 2000-square feet from the Center (which will in turn help its operating costs), the vast majority of CCZ will be renovated to support local education and increase tourism into our downtown through promoting the arts, history, aviation, aerospace, engineering and design. If I bordered upon the tacky by revealing our for-profit numbers for 2023, it's because we will soon be launching a massive capital funding campaign to help bring the Center to full fruition. Our own personal pledge will be significant, but the CCZ will ultimately cost 3.8 million dollars to complete. We donated the building, and the City of Zanesville has already approved a $23,000 grant. All of this within ninety days! We're off to a fabulous start, but this is only the beginning. 

For more information about Cole Center Zanesville:  Cole Center Zanesville: Executive Summery and Cole Center Zanesville, Our Vision

Within the local art scene, Erin and I committed to be officers in the Artist Colony of Zanesville (ArtCOZ), Erin as President and myself as Secretary. The Colony has enjoyed a very successful year, with a membership drive that took us past the 100-member mark for the first time since 2006. We led a great team that hosted the 2023 Y-Bridge Arts Festival, our region's largest outdoor annual event, and Holiday Arts Fest at our Welcome Center in December to end the year. We're both still on the hook as ArtCOZ officers through 2024.     

Our son, Ronnie Cole, graduated from Xavier University with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Engineering. This past July he started his career with Boeing in St. Louis, writing code for their military flight simulators - and other 'need to know' projects. So utterly proud of him!

Barnes & Noble is picking up Ron Cole's Warbirds of World War Two wall calendar for the nineth year in a row. Royalties are not life-changing, but it's a great way to get my art in front of new people. 

Our main Zanesville gallery, at 616 Main Street, has evolved a lot in 2023. We've had our original Japanese A6M2 Model 21 Zero Fighter (built in 1943 and recovered from the island of Ballalae in 2019) for eighteen months and has become essentially complete this year, with the addition of original components such as one Type 87 aircraft machine gun (inoperable), original Type 96 ku radio receiver (the world's only known example), and a pilot's seat that was built to exact specs (the original seats were made of a nickel/magnesium alloy that exfoliated very quickly). Thus, we almost have one of the rarest original warbirds in the world that you can sit in, right here in Zanesville, Ohio on public display. Cole's Downtown Gallery 

Erin and I hosted the WHIZ/Marquee Broadcasting Christmas Party again this year, then hosted what was supposed to have been a surprise retirement party a few days later for WHIZ General Manager Doug Pickrell (congrats, Doug and Star)!  We never designed our 616 Main Street space as an event center, but that so many people are drawn to the atmosphere of this place and regularly ask to join us there - it's rewarding to share a place with friends that we created with our own eccentricities in mind (we have a table made out of a real zebra, after all). 

I created an especially unique piece for this year's Festival of Trees, an annual tradition I've undertaken in support of the Zanesville Muskingum County Chamber of Commerce for seven years running. My painting depicts the USS Airship Shenandoah carrying Santa Clause to Zanesville over the Muskingum County Courthouse. It raised a record $2,700 for the Chamber at auction. Erin and I worked on the WHIZ submission this year; a Christmas event table with a nutcracker built into it, and a nutcracker theme. It raised in excess of $7000 for the cause and included a marketing package from the station. A terrific event overall, made all the more festive as it always takes place during the November First Friday Art Walk downtown, and our gallery is open the following day as well. Perhaps I'm confusing 'festive' with 'chaotic' - but it all came together in the end. 

In 2024 Cole's Aircraft will be expanding its product line into aerospace to include displays featuring Apollo and space shuttle programs, but we will not ignore new aviation subjects in the new year. We will be supercharging our collection of important artifacts and artwork for display in the new building. 

Above all, Erin and I wish to thank everyone, near and far, for their support of our projects, products, and of course friendship. 

Happy New Year!   

Ron & Erin Cole

 

The Cole Center Zanesville

Executive Summary

The Cole Center Zanesville (CCZ) will be a transformational project in historic downtown Zanesville and elevate what has been a growing art tourism niche in Zanesville to a premiere destination that will draw thousands of aviation and art enthusiasts. CCZ will also serve as a center for educational events and programming to educate visitors on aviation history and expose youth to art, aviation, science, technology and industrial design.  

The CCZ is the vision of Ron and Erin Cole. Ron Cole’s nationally renowned works of aviation art have already proven to be a tourist attraction at his gallery on Main Street in Zanesville. CCZ will be nearly 7-times larger and dedicated to entertaining and inspiring visitors young and old. 

In mid-2023 Ron Cole and his wife, Erin Cole, purchased the formerly condemned 26,000-square-feet historic Montgomery Ward Building in downtown Zanesville, Ohio, and established Cole Center Zanesville, Inc., as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (CCZ). CCZ will transform the historic structure into a museum and interactive collection of historic aviation and automotive displays, all in the interests of art, education, tourism, and local economic development.

The CCZ project has the support of the City of Zanesville, which as has awarded a $23,000 grant to the project. The Zanesville-Muskingum County Conventions and Visitors Bureau also supports the project as it can be a center piece of the community’s arts and culture tourism strategy that will complement the Zanesville Art Museum, the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio, Yan Sun Art Museum & Gallery and downtown First Friday’s Events.  

The Coles have and will continue to personally invest in the project. However, state and private foundation grant requests and a planned capital campaign will help offset the high cost of rehabilitating the downtown building. Once renovated, fee revenues will allow the sustained operation of the Cole Art Center. 

Background

Ron and Erin Cole have a successful aviation art business, Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art, with an existing 4,000-square-feet gallery and studio at 616 Main Street, Zanesville, Ohio. Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art offers over 600 different products.  From the studio they produce prints of historic aircraft and ship them around the world. Many of Ron Cole’s high-end works include actual pieces of the historic aircrafts in the art. Learn more at https://roncole.net.

Ron is a product development engineer, artist, and designer who has worked for Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Boeing, NASA and other renowned companies. His passion has always been aviation, and 12 years ago, he made his aviation art business his full-time job. The Cole Aviation Art Gallery is a showcase and has helped to reinvigorate Main Street in Zanesville.     

The Coles both serve as officers for the Artist Colony of Zanesville (ArtCOZ), which hosts the community's First Friday Art Walks, Y-Bridge Arts Festival, and Holiday Art Fest, among other area art activities and shows. The Coles recognize how tourism art can drive economic revitalization. 

Ron Cole is a collector of historic aircrafts and aircraft elements. The center piece of his existing gallery on Main Street is the cockpit and front fuselage of a WWII A6M2 Model 21 Zero fighter. 

Most of his collection has remained in storage due to lack of display space, but the collection includes significant pieces of aviation and aerospace history, such as a girder from the airship Hindenburg, original material from the Wright Brother's 1903 Flyer and Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, sections of titanium from an SR-71 Blackbird, Space Shuttle Atlantis, Apollo 1, and hundreds of other important pieces of history and technology covering the dawn of flight to the present day. 

The exhibit space at the CCZ will allow for more displays of aviation and automotive history and art on a much larger scale than the current gallery.

CCZ is being modeled after the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine. That facility has been operational for almost 50 years and draws over 30,000 visitors a year. The Owls Head Transportation Museum was established as a non-profit collection of historic transportation-themed displays in 1974. The collection has grown to include over 150 historic aircraft, automobiles, and related artifacts. The facility is constantly booked for related events, conventions, auctions, reunions, and lectures, all of which bring thousands of visitors into the small community of Owls Head. Focusing upon education and inspiring young people, the organization plays a vital role in exposing young minds to technology, history, mechanics, and other subject matter. Learn more at https://owlshead.org.

Owls Head is a small town far removed from other cities. Conversely, CCZ is four blocks from heavily traveled I-70 between Columbus and Pittsburgh. The CCZ will be a draw for aviation enthusiasts and augment Ohio’s aviation strengths and history as home of the Wright brothers, WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker, record-setting astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, Wright Patterson Air Force Base and Museum, GE Aircraft Engines, NASA Glenn and the burgeoning eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) industry.

Cole Center Zanesville

The Coles acquired the four-story former Montgomery Ward, 35 S. 4^th Street, Zanesville, during the summer of 2023. The building had been largely vacant for over 20 years and decaying with time. The 26,000-square-feet building was condemned by the City of Zanesville before the Coles bought it. The roof has been repaired, and the property has been sealed. Plans have been made for a $3.8-million complete renovation of the building. 

A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization the Cole COZ, Inc., will own the building. CCZ will operate the facility as “an event and program venue which collects, preserves, and promotes artifacts, relics, and artwork for the benefit of the people of Zanesville, Ohio, and the surrounding communities by facilitating collaboration, tourism, and education of art history and technology.” The Coles will donate their vast collection of art, displays, and rare artifacts to CCZ.

The CCZ mission has two parts, neither of which will ever be at the expense of the other: Help recognize, preserve, and display Ohio's preeminent role in aerospace development in the United States, and to utilize our displays, our building, our events and our location, to help educate and inspire our young people in the areas of aerospace, technology, history, design, and art.

The CCZ will feature two floors of exhibit space as well as event space and classroom space. Learn more at: https://colesaircraft.world/cole-art-center

Project Economic Impacts

CCZ will become key component of the Zanesville community’s arts and culture tourism strategy that will complement the Zanesville Art Museum, the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio, Yan Sun Art Museum & Gallery and downtown First Friday’s Events.  

Based upon the Owls Head museum in Maine visitors and visitors to the Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio in Zanesville, thousands of art and aviation enthusiasts can be expected to visit CCZ. 

A study by Tourism Economics calculated that visitors spent $155.4 million in Muskingum County in 2019. The Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 study found that a typical Southeastern Ohio arts and culture visitor from outside of the county spends an average of $48 in a community they visit. While The Wilds is the biggest attraction in the county, visitors often seek add-on events to turn a day-trip into a weekend trip. CCZ will provide the over 110,000 annual visitors to The Wilds a reason to turn a day trip into a weekend trip. Adding an overnight stay, greatly increases the visitor expenditures through lodging, meals and bed taxes. The Convention and Visitor Bureau (CVB) estimates adding an overnight stay increases per person expenditures by $120 per person. Even modest assumptions about visitors and overnight stays could generate a half a million dollars a year in visitor spending in Muskingum County. 

Project Educational Impacts

The Coles intend to significantly expand upon the community’s efforts to help young people of our region determine how they wish to proceed with their education. Through CCZ, the Coles will significantly expand upon their partnership with leaders of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) programs in the area by offering career exploration, dual enrollment credit opportunities, and apprenticeships. The Coles are meeting regularly with leaders from Foxfire public charter school for at-risk youth to establish joint programs for their students at CCZ.

Project Budget

Project Sustainability

CCZ has employed a CPA with non-profit experience to prepare five-year operating financial projections. Revenues will include memberships dues, admission fees, tour fees, rent and gift shop sales. Expenses include payroll, utilities, advertising, insurance, and other related operating expenses.  The Owls Head Aviation and Transportation Museum in the small town of Owls Head, Maine, serves as the model.  The Owls Head facility has been operational for nearly 50 years in a more isolated location, yet it draws over 30,000 visitors a year. The projections show CCZ opening in year two after completing renovations. Year two revenues are projected at $125,985. Projections reflect a ramp up of visitors and revenue each year, reaching positive cash flow by the fourth year of operations.

Approximately 4,500 SF of space in the basement of the building will be leased to Cole’s business, Cole’s Aircraft Aviation Art for production and warehouse space. The business will pay a market rent to CCZ, which will help sustain its operations. 

 

Project Timeline

CCZ is proceeding with project design and permitting. The Coles hope to receive approval for the Ohio’s Strategic One-Time Community Investment Fund grant in the summer of 2024 and begin construction in the fall of 2024. Construction will take an estimated 14 months. CCZ should be open and operational in early 2026.