In this episode of The Arcfluence Podcast, Nick and Paul sit down with Kathy Binner, founder of Kathy Binner International Academy, to trace three decades of building in Columbus - from salon ownership and commercial real estate to education, authorship, mentorship, and community leadership.

Kathy shares how buying her first building forced her to learn the realities of change-of-use, life-safety requirements, and the discipline behind commercial ownership. The conversation also explores her transition from operator to educator, her work with Happy House Hunters and now the Central Ohio Investor Network (COIN), the creation of the Stephanie Milo Jenkins Initiative, and the philosophy that has guided her career: treat the work in front of you like your name is already on the door.

This is a conversation about entrepreneurship as posture, real estate as education, and the quiet, long-term work of helping shape a city from inside its rooms.

Omar ElhagMusa, Executive Vice President at Spring Garden Lending, joins the Arcfluence Podcast to discuss Columbus’s first zoning rewrite in seventy years—Zone In Phase 1. He serves on the City’s Zoning Advisory Committee and brings a background spanning lending, policy, and small-scale residential investment.

The conversation focuses on how the new code actually functions: corridor-based upzoning tied to bus rapid transit, the removal of parking minimums, and the constraints created by Columbus’s predominantly R-1 zoning. It also covers single-stair construction, the impact of entitlement risk on project feasibility, and the role of by-right development in reducing pre-development uncertainty.

The episode closes on small-scale density—particularly duplexes—and the interdependence between transit and land use. Omar’s perspective reflects the overlap between financing, policy, and design, and how those systems shape what ultimately gets built.

Podcast for entertainment purposes only. Not financial advice.

Steven Rhodes is a mechanical engineer and Certified Passive House Consultant (Phius CPHC) who built Central Ohio's first certified passive house in Clintonville. In this episode, he breaks down what passive house certification actually means in practical terms - envelope performance, air quality, energy independence, and the real numbers behind it.

Steven walks through what his family pays to heat and cool their home ($41/month), how the Phius Revive program is making passive house retrofits accessible to existing homeowners, and why Ohio's building code is about to change in ways that push the entire industry toward higher-performance construction.

If you design, build, invest in, or own a home in Ohio, the code changes Steven describes will affect you.