Local Resource Library · ColumbusThe Columbus Resource Library
Inside Columbus's Data Center and Semiconductor Corridor
New Albany did not become a data center hub by accident. The New Albany International Business Park has hosted data centers since 2010, and today spans roughly 12,000 acres across Franklin and Licking counties, with more than 40 operational facilities and 28 more under construction, run by 15 different companies.
Intel's Ohio One fab sits inside that same corridor and anchors the semiconductor side of the story. At 28 billion dollars and roughly 1,000 acres, it is one of the largest single manufacturing investments in state history. The schedule has slipped from an original 2025 opening to a 2030 to 2031 completion for the first module and 2031 to 2032 for the second, but more than 5 billion dollars has already gone into the ground and crews have logged over 6.4 million craft hours.
Meta, Vantage, AWS, and Cologix are each independently documented at nine figure or larger investment levels in the same general corridor. Meta's build alone has documented 1,200 skilled trades on site at peak construction, and Vantage's OH1 campus counts more than 1,500 people across construction and operations combined.
AEP Ohio's own regulatory filings with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio show 5,642 megawatts of binding, collateralized data center contracts signed under its data center tariff as of February 2026, on top of 12,219 megawatts signed before the tariff, for 17,861 megawatts total contracted, coming online progressively through 2035.
For a contractor or facilities lead new to the area, the throughline is crew density and duration. These are not short mobilizations. A single hyperscale building can run a 12 to 18 month construction cycle, and a campus the size of Vantage's or Meta's is really a rolling sequence of buildings that keeps a crew on site for years.
That density is also why a break room trailer earns its place on these sites so quickly. A data center's own interior break rooms are typically the last space finished, arriving right when electrical and mechanical rough in headcount peaks. A delivered trailer skips that wait entirely, running from the first week of mobilization instead of the last month before occupancy.
The corridor's growth also is not slowing. AWS alone committed 10 billion dollars in new Ohio investment in December 2024, bringing its total to more than 23 billion dollars by 2030, and Cologix's Lewis Center complex in neighboring Delaware County is targeting a fall 2026 first phase on top of its Central Ohio builds already underway.
Sources: Ohio Consumers' Counsel data center fact sheet
Rickenbacker: Why Columbus's South Side Runs Like an Inland Port
Rickenbacker International Airport is frequently described as the country's second largest inland port, and the geography explains why. The site sits close enough to major interstates and rail lines to reach roughly half the United States population within a single day's drive or rail move.
The corridor is entering a new construction cycle on top of an already large base. A planned 1,770 acre intermodal terminal, a 1,420 acre logistics park, and a 1,131 acre rail served logistics center are all set to begin work in 2026, with completion targeted around 2028.
Nearer term, construction is already underway. Trident Capital Group and O'Connor Capital Partners broke ground on the 959,579 square foot Rickenbacker Industrial Center, targeting delivery in the first quarter of 2027. Across the broader cluster, roughly 4.2 million square feet of new logistics space is on the way, with Amazon's own annex contributing 400,000 square feet.
Amazon, DHL, and a group of third party logistics providers have committed more than 300 million dollars in facility expansions across the corridor. That is a lot of simultaneous construction spread across a fairly compact stretch of Columbus's south side.
Just south of Rickenbacker itself, Grove City and Obetz are absorbing overflow industrial growth. The Alkire Air Commerce Center is beginning construction in spring 2026, and Merus has broken ground on the 190,960 square foot Dixon Commerce Center in Obetz, with 32 foot clear heights and 19 dock positions.
Nearby in Pickaway County, Anduril's Arsenal 1 defense manufacturing campus adds another kind of demand entirely. Valued at 910.5 million dollars and targeting 4,008 jobs by 2035, the site scaled from 143 workers on site as of mid-2026 toward a target of 250 by year end, all while the first Ohio built Fury aircraft rolled off the production line.
For a general contractor working any of these sites, the pattern repeats: greenfield land, a compressed construction timeline, and no on site amenities until the building shell closes in. A trailer that arrives already wired for a 240V-50A shore cord solves that gap without waiting on permanent utilities.
Sources: MORPC Rickenbacker area project profile
Columbus's Construction Numbers, Explained
Two separate Bureau of Labor Statistics data series back the claim that Columbus is growing faster than any comparable eastern metro, and it is worth walking through both so the number holds up to scrutiny.
The state level series, BLS State Employment and Unemployment for July 2026, shows Ohio's total construction workforce at 273,200, up 5.3 percent year over year. That is both the largest construction workforce and the fastest growth rate among the four eastern states in our research set, ahead of Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee.
The sharper cut comes from the metro level series, pulled from the BLS Public Data API under series ID SMU39181401500000001. It isolates Columbus specifically: from 49.9 thousand construction workers in July 2022 to 71.1 thousand in July 2026, a 42.5 percent increase over four years and a 13.6 percent increase over the most recent year alone.
Both figures point the same direction, and the metro number in particular outpaces every other eastern city in the research set, including Atlanta's 11.7 percent four year growth and Nashville's 11.2 percent, despite Columbus having a smaller metro population than either.
The Ohio Department of Transportation's own FY2026 funding data adds a useful wrinkle to the story. Columbus's own state highway district received only 171 million dollars, about 5 percent of Ohio's statewide transportation budget, the smallest share of any major metro district in the state, while Cleveland's district received 589 million dollars.
That gap matters because it changes how a reader should interpret the growth. Columbus's construction boom is being funded overwhelmingly by private capital, not by public highway spending. Intel, Anduril, the data center corridor, the new airport terminal, and the warehouse sector account for most of the headcount increase.
For anyone trying to plan crew logistics around this growth, the takeaway is straightforward. This is not a one project story that could stall if a single developer changes plans. It is five or six independently funded, independently documented demand drivers stacked in the same metro at the same time.
Sources: BLS Ohio Economy at a Glance
Heat, Cold, and Federal Rules: What Columbus Contractors Should Know
Ohio's private sector employers operate under federal OSHA rather than a state run plan, which surprises some contractors moving crews in from a state with its own heat standard. The applicable framework in Ohio has three parts, and understanding all three matters for planning break space on any outdoor or indoor job.
The first is the General Duty Clause, Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. It requires an employer to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious harm, and OSHA has already used this clause specifically to cite employers over heat related hazards.
The second is OSHA's National Emphasis Program on heat, under Directive CPL 03-00-024, in effect since April 10, 2026. This program directs federal inspectors to proactively check for heat illness hazards during any inspection where heat conditions are present, not only after a worker complaint.
The third is OSHA's proposed federal heat rule, which is not yet final but lays out specific numbers. Its trigger for initial heat measures sits at a heat index of 80 degrees, and its trigger for high heat measures sits at 90 degrees. A compliant break area under the proposed rule must have shade or be an air conditioned space such as a trailer, with a bare 12 by 12 foot tent as the baseline for an employer with nothing else in place.
Columbus's own climate numbers show why this matters even in a comparatively mild summer metro. The normal peak heat index on an ordinary July afternoon here is 84.9 degrees, which already clears that 80 degree initial trigger without a heat wave involved.
OSHA's own materials make a broader point worth repeating on a page like this one. Hazardous heat, in the agency's words, can occur indoors or outdoors, and can occur during any season if the conditions are right, not only during heat waves.
On the opposite end of the calendar, Columbus averages 97.7 freeze days a year, one of the highest counts documented anywhere in our eight city research set. A trailer built for both ends of that range, with a mini split air conditioner and backup electric heaters, covers a much larger share of a Columbus crew's working calendar than a cooling only unit would.
Sources: OSHA heat exposure standards
Downtown, Grandview, and the Ohio State Campus: Columbus's Biggest Current Builds
Three separate nine or ten figure projects are reshaping the core of Columbus at the same time, and each one is worth understanding on its own terms if you are planning crew logistics anywhere near downtown.
The Scioto Peninsula is a 500 million dollar redevelopment of 27 riverfront acres near COSI. Its first phase, completed in 2023, added offices, green space, residential units, a boutique hotel, and food and beverage space. Phase 1B started construction in 2025 and is completing in 2026, and Phase 2 buildings at Broad and Belle Streets and at Capital and Starling Streets are already approved by the Downtown Commission.
A few miles west, Grandview Yard's billion dollar build out is delivering its 385 unit Parkline apartment building in 2026, a six story project with ground level retail that will push the development's total residences toward nearly 1,900. The overall Grandview Yard project already carries 1.2 million square feet of built commercial space, with 1.4 million anticipated at full completion.
On Ohio State's campus, the newly completed 1.9 billion dollar University Hospital freed roughly 12 acres of land along the realigned Cannon Drive corridor for further development. Cannon Drive's second phase, running between John Herrick Drive and Woody Hayes Drive, is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
The university has also unveiled preliminary designs for a West Campus Innovation District near Lane Avenue and Kenny Road, including an Energy Advancement and Innovation Center and an Interdisciplinary Research Facility, and crews are renovating the historic Bricker Hall for the Department of Economics.
Student housing construction along High Street rounds out the picture. 9th and High, the tallest mass timber student housing building in the country, broke ground in September 2025 and is set to open by summer 2027 with 186 units and 493 beds. Blume on 16th, accommodating 325 residents, is opening in fall 2026.
None of these are small, short duration jobs. Each one carries a large, name brand general contractor and a documented, multi year crew ramp, which is exactly the kind of site where a delivered, ready day one break room trailer earns its keep instead of waiting on a temporary structure to be built out from scratch.
