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There is no such thing as too much
economic diversification for this city.
While some cities are fighting to retain their local talent, Columbus, Ohio, is experiencing an overflow of returning talent.
As One Columbus President and CEO Kenny McDonald describes it, with major tech investments pouring into the city, added programs to increase affordable and accessible housing, and a focus on revitalizing downtown, more and more Columbus natives who left in search of greater opportunities are returning to the city to work in leading industries and enjoy a richer quality of life.
This wasn’t always the case. “We used to have a moderately good economy and then we would lose top talent to the West Coast,” McDonald says. “Because of our quality of life, a lot of people wanted to be back here but didn’t always have the career opportunities that we have now.”
Columbus has been a long-standing home to Fortune 1000 company headquarters and operations offices for such names as Honda, Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. Over the years, the state capital has continued to diversify its economy, expanding into emerging industries such as fintech and insurtech, life sciences and the semiconductor supply chain.
In 2022, Intel announced plans for the largest single private sector investment in Ohio history with an initial investment of more than $28 billion to construct two new leading-edge chip factories 45 minutes from Columbus. The project is expected to create thousands of jobs and support tens of thousands of local long-term careers.
With Columbus being the home of Ohio State University and more than 15 other colleges, Intel pledged an additional $100 million toward partnerships with educational institutions to build a talent pipeline and strengthen local research programs.
Meanwhile, established industries like automotive and mobility, fashion and retail, finance, food and beverage, and insurance have also continued boosting the city’s capital.
In 2022, Honda and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution announced a joint venture with plans to open a $4.4 billion EV battery plant 40 miles southwest of Columbus. The facility is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2025, according to a Honda press release. Honda also plans to update three of its Ohio facilities—two of which are located in the Columbus area—with a $700 million investment.
Honda’s investment is one of the many achievements propelling Columbus to the forefront of transportation innovation. In 2024, Gov. Mike DeWine announced the state’s plans to award nearly $16 million for 22 new electric vehicle charging stations to be installed along Ohio’s interstates, state routes and U.S. highways. In addition to EV investment and expanding its footprint in the automotive industry, the city is making strides to ensure its residents have affordable and accessible transportation.
“We were the largest city in America without a mass transit system until this last fall, when we passed a really big measure to build at scale a rapid bus mass transit system that will, hopefully over time, remove some of those barriers that some people in our region had endured,” McDonald says. “We also are making sure that the new companies that we’re attracting are well aware of how to access and speak to our minority populations so that they’re clearly articulating what it takes to take advantage of those opportunities.”
With all the economic growth, one of the city’s biggest challenges is keeping up with the housing supply.
In November 2024, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther announced the creation of the Regional Housing Coalition to expand and diversify the region’s housing supply, intended to improve housing affordability for more families.
Derrick Clay, president and CEO of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce says that with the city’s exponential expansion, it is currently about 200,000 housing units short of where it should be. However, local leadership is working to turn the housing shortage around.
“We were a modern-day city operating on 70-year-old zoning laws,” Clay says. “A whole new code section was written for our zoning laws, which will allow us to build more densely in the city and ease some of the red tape that goes along with zoning. Immediately, we can add 88,000 more units to our portfolio over the next decade. That’s going to help us tremendously with the housing demand.”
To meet the growing housing demand, the suburban areas surrounding Columbus also have to get on board with creating additional housing. Danielle Sydnor, CEO of nonprofit RISE Together Innovation Institute, says the city’s excessive growth has resulted in displacement of lower-income communities and Ohio residents are having to search outside of Columbus to find affordable housing.
“If you think about a community that has this rapid growth, and no one’s been willing to say out loud the fact that racism is pervasive and that economic inequities are disproportionately harming the Black community more than anybody, it’s really hard,” Sydnor says. “It’s hard to cure a problem that you never diagnose. Our goal is to really diagnose the appropriate problems, say them out loud and inject those things into normal conversation so we can work on these solutions together.”
As Columbus continues to acquire larger technological investments, expand its talent pipeline from local universities to local companies, and address its housing and public transportation shortage, the city is bound to continue attracting more talent and businesses to its rapidly growing tech hub.
How quickly Columbus can adapt to its bursting population will be the true determinant of sustainable growth.
“We are living in a different world and economy and everything is at risk,” McDonald advises Baton Rouge business leaders. “And while that’s a little scary, it’s also a huge opportunity to help the employers you currently have skate to where the puck is going to be and be obsessive about being more diversified. You can never be diverse enough economically or from a talent base.”
Read about the other four peer and aspirational cities on the verge of transformation.
