Columbus, OH: A Top Local Market to Watch in 2026

Oct. 8, 2025

Key Highlights

The John Glenn Columbus Airport project, valued at $1.8 billion, broke ground in February 2025, boosting regional connectivity.
Major tech investments include Intel's delayed $20 billion Johnstown Gateway, Amazon's $500 million data center, and Google's $28 billion expansion in New Albany.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is set to open in early 2026, enhancing healthcare infrastructure.

Columbus contractors are working on the $1.8-billion John Glenn Columbus Airport project that broke ground in Feb. 2025 and are hoping plans for billions in new construction become a reality, including Intel Corp.’s plan (recently delayed) for the $20-billion Johnstown Gateway Planned District near several semiconductor plants; a $500-million Amazon data center in Jefferson, OH; and Google’s $28-billion expansion project in New Albany, OH; the $1.6-billion Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center schedule to open in early 2026; and the $345-million Merchant Building development now underway.

SALES ESTIMATES

2025 Total Electrical Sales Estimate: $951.5 million

Electrical Contractor $ Potential Estimate: $556.8 million

Industrial $ Sales Potential Estimate: $204.4 million

BUILDING PERMITS

Single-Family: 3,201 permits

Multi-Family: 6,956 permits

POPULATION GROWTH

Population Estimate 2024: 2,225,377

# Change 2023-2024: 30,348

# Change 2020-2024: 83,354

New Residents per Day: 61.8

Electrical Wholesaling's Top 10 Local Markets to Watch gives you a taste of the mountain of electrical market sales estimates and other local market data available at Electrical Marketing newsletter for just $99 per year. This data includes:

Local market sales estimates, building permits and population data for more than 300 other Metropolitan Statistical areas
The Electrical Price Index (EPI) - A monthly compilation of pricing trends for more than 20 key electrical product groups
Annual product sales estimates from 16 key electrical products

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Sources of market data: Local market data collected by Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and county. Sales estimates developed with sales-per-employee multipliers from Electrical Wholesaling’s Market Planning Guide ($78,775 per electrical contractor employee and $2,650 per industrial employee) and employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Building permit and population data downloaded from U.S. Census Bureau website.

About the Author

Jim Lucy

Editor-in-Chief of Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing

Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 40 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter, and as a contributing writer for EC&M magazine During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement.

Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted with his wife and three sons in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 30 years.