For more than three decades, an international designer and manufacturer of advanced magnetic and cryogenic measurement technology has called Westerville home.
Lake Shore Cryotronics was founded in 1967 and has been in Westerville since the late 1970s. It has been in its current, 55,000-square-foot building at 575 McCorkle Blvd. since 1997.
The company develops cryogenic temperature sensors and instrumentation and sensors for magnetic measurements.
“We measure temperature very close down to absolute zero on the Kelvin scale,” says company chairman John Swartz. “We also measure magnetic fields and make a series of Gauss meters that do that.”
Swartz – who co-founded Lake Shore with his brother, David – has been a Westerville area resident since before Lake Shore even existed, when he was working as an engineering professor at The Ohio State University.
After he moved into the city, he jumped at the opportunity when the space that was once a Kroger store at 64 E. Walnut St. came available. Lake Shore expanded the building to its current structure before striking a deal with the city that moved the company to its modern-day location and put the Walnut Street building in the city’s hands.
Today, the company employs about 140 and does business all over the world, with more than 60 percent of its products sold to locations outside the U.S.
Westerville has been a good community for Lake Shore, Swartz says. The company has a lot of electrical engineering needs, and having OSU nearby is a huge help on that front.
“We’ve got people working here from all over the world at this point,” he says.
Though Swartz stepped down as president and CEO in 2003, Lake Shore is still a family company. He was succeeded by his son, Michael, as president and CEO; his daughter Karen Lint is the company’s chief operating officer; and his daughter Susan Ruhl works in the information technology department.
Among the company’s community-minded endeavors are an annual food drive for the Westerville Area Resource Ministry and a Student Day that introduces advanced science students from local high schools to Lake Shore’s facility, products and technology.
Garth Bishop is editor of Westerville Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
