Atlanta-based Core5 Industrial Partners has fired up construction on a new industrial campus just east of Rickenbacker International Airport, a project that will add more than 2.5 million square feet of space to the region's already busy freight corridor. The multi-building site lands in the middle of a hot streak for southeast Columbus and nearby towns, which keep luring big-format logistics projects. Local officials, developers and brokers say the area's mix of rail, highway and air connections continues to pull national warehouse users straight to Rickenbacker’s doorstep.
As reported by Columbus Business First, Core5 started site work this week, and the campus is expected to total more than 2.5 million square feet. Today's report notes the project will be marketed as speculative space, with the developer positioning the site for both distribution and manufacturing tenants. The timing drops a sizable block of logistics capacity into a market that has already seen roughly a half dozen major announcements this year.
What Core5 Is Building
Core5's marketing materials show the campus rolling out in phases, with multiple buildings in the 200,000 to 500,000 square foot range and at least one roughly 310,000 square foot structure already listed for lease. The company’s available-properties brochure and the C5 Eastpoint property page both point to early availability windows beginning in Q3 2026, a sign that pad work and infrastructure are already well underway. For project specifics, see Core5 Industrial Partners.
Part Of A Bigger South‑Columbus Surge
Core5 is not the only player staking out ground near Rickenbacker. VanTrust has announced Park 762, a roughly 1.08 million square foot speculative building in the Lockbourne and Rickenbacker submarket, and Opus has kicked off Canal Crossing Commerce Center, an 898,500 square foot, three-building project that the developer says will create more than 400 jobs. Cincinnati-based Merus also broke ground this month on a 190,960 square foot speculative building in Obetz, underscoring how many developers are racing to add modern warehouse capacity around the airport. See VanTrust, Opus and Columbus Business First for more on those projects.
Local Money And Job Wins
Municipal records show the Rickenbacker Community Reinvestment Area is still a key tool for pulling in freight-linked development. Recent council filings outline CRA agreements that allow property tax abatements of up to 75% for as many as 15 years. Those incentives, combined with public infrastructure commitments and the area’s intermodal access, are cited in permitting and council documents as crucial pieces in getting projects shovel-ready. See Columbus City Council records for the legislation and project fact sheets.
What to watch next: permit filings, traffic studies and leasing announcements as Core5 moves past pad work and into vertical construction later this year. Core5's leasing materials and developer timelines suggest at least some buildings could be available by late 2026 or into 2027, which would make this one of the faster-turning speculative campuses to hit the Rickenbacker corridor. See Core5 Industrial Partners for timelines and marketing details.
