A Cardinal Health warehouse just south of Rickenbacker International Airport in Pickaway County sold this week for $49 million, the latest big-money bet circling Columbus's freight hub. The deal adds to a string of large industrial trades around the airport and shows investors are still hungry for logistics properties parked near air and rail intermodal connections.
According to yesterday's reporting, the property changed hands for $49 million. Columbus Business First first published the transaction details and placed the trade in the context of recent activity in the Rickenbacker corridor.
Big Money Keeps Circling Rickenbacker
The sale lands amid a flurry of Rickenbacker-area action as investors chase freight-adjacent assets. As one example, a roughly 1.6-million-square-foot warehouse north of the airport recently traded for about $137 million, illustrating the premiums buyers are willing to pay in the submarket.
Why Investors Keep Chasing Rickenbacker
Industry market reporting points to a mix of build-to-suit deliveries and steady investor demand in the Rickenbacker submarket, even as overall absorption softened last year. Newmark's Q4 2024 Columbus industrial report documents several major deliveries in the Rickenbacker area, including a 350,000-square-foot Cardinal Health Consumer Health Logistics Center, and lays out vacancy and absorption trends that help explain why institutional buyers prize well-located logistics buildings. Newmark's data show the corridor remains a focal point for investors and developers.
Local Footprint And Jobs
Cardinal Health has been steadily growing its Columbus-area distribution footprint in recent years. The company opened a roughly 580,000-square-foot center near Rickenbacker in 2022, according to earlier reporting that was covered by Columbus Business First. Pickaway County's 2023 audit notes Cardinal Health also opened a pharmaceutical distribution center in northern Pickaway County that created about 150 jobs and represented roughly a $40 million investment, and Pickaway County documents flag the company as a notable local employer.
For now, the buyer and any concrete plans for leasing or repositioning the building have not been widely disclosed. Those decisions will determine whether the trade brings new jobs, reshuffled tenancy, or a bump in truck traffic for surrounding towns. Public filings and local planning notices will offer the first clues about how the property is put to work from here.
