Work is underway on an $89 million dollar office development just off of Olentangy River Road. When completed, the two new buildings – one five stories and the other four – will house about 1,600 OhioHealth employees.
Those employees, who will not start moving into their new offices until early 2019, are currently scattered at different office spaces throughout the region. About half of them will be moving from Downtown, where OhioHealth workers are split between the Continental Plaza building at 180 E. Broad St. and the PNC Building across the street.
The new office complex is located on about 12 acres of land south of North Broadway and east of Olentangy River Road, between the Canterbury Apartments tower and the Olentangy River. It’s a piece of land that OhioHealth has owned for years.
OhioHealth’s Riverside Methodist Hospital sits on the other side of North Broadway and State Route 315.
“Work is well under way on our new administrative office campus,” said Mark Hopkins, Media Relations Director for OhioHealth. “We’ve completely razed and removed our old distribution center and now they are hard at work doing site preparation, grading and foundational work.”
The two buildings will be connected to each other, and to a 1,350-space parking garage, by elevated pedestrian walkways. A surface parking lot will accommodate an additional 350 vehicles.
The buildings were designed by Moody Nolan and are being built by Daimler.
The project was supported by an incentive package approved by the Columbus City Council in September of last year. That package grants income tax reductions in exchange for OhioHealth’s commitment to employ a little over 2,500 people in the office complex by 2024.
Also a part of the agreement is a series of major road and infrastructure upgrades that will be timed to be completed before the new offices open. Two upgraded roads with new sidewalks and shared-use paths will provide direct access to the site from both North Broadway and Olentangy River Road.
The long off-ramp that currently deposits drivers exiting 315 North onto North Broadway will be removed as part of the changes. The exit is officially known as Ramp 6C but is frequently referred to as the “pinball ramp” for its length and for the speed of cars coming off the ramp and merging with east-bound traffic on North Broadway.
The plans come at a time of increased development activity along the stretch of Olentangy River Road between North Broadway and Ackerman Road. Multiple new hotels and commercial buildings have been built along the corridor in recent years, and work is set to start next spring on a plan to demolish and replace the University City retail center.
Dublin-based developer Crawford Hoying has also explored plans to eventually build a mixed-use development on the 16-acre Kohls site it controls just south of the new office complex.
Renderings by Moody Nolan.
