Nationwide Children's Hospital has purchased an entire 3.62-acre block along East Main Street for $7.6 million, expanding its real estate footprint north of Interstate 70 even as the hospital pours money into a massive expansion of its main campus. The block sits on the south side of East Main Street between South 17th and South 18th streets, stretching south to East Mound Street, and the hospital has not announced any specific plans for what will go there.
The purchase closed on August 7, according to property records cited by NBC4 WCMH-TV, whose reporting on the deal was written by Thomas Cobb. The land was previously owned by the Douglas Lula Foundation, an organization associated with Columbus native and former world heavyweight boxing champion James “Buster” Douglas, and Turner Construction Company had leased the property for parking, according to a hospital spokesperson. Property records show the parcel last sold for $575,000 to the Smith Tandy Group back in December 2012 — a fraction of what Nationwide Children's just paid for it.
A Growing Presence North of the Interstate
The newly acquired block sits directly adjacent to the hospital's Near East Office, a four-story office building and parking garage at 431 S. 18th St. that was completed in 2018. Nationwide Children's also already owns a roughly one-third-acre parcel immediately west of the new site, across South 17th Street, which it purchased back in 2012. The hospital currently operates outpatient care locations both east and west of the property along East Main Street, meaning the new purchase fills a gap in an already-expanding cluster of hospital-owned sites.
A Nationwide Children's spokesperson said acquiring the property allows the hospital to plan thoughtfully for both the short-term and long-term future of a site that is now adjacent to its growing campus. The hospital has not disclosed whether it intends to use the block for outpatient facilities, administrative space, parking, or something tied to its community housing work — leaving the site's ultimate purpose an open question for now.
The Bigger Picture: A $1.27 Billion Main Campus Overhaul
The East Main Street purchase is a relatively small line item next to what's happening south of I-70, where Nationwide Children's is undertaking the largest construction investment in its history. Construction began in May 2025 on a 14-story, 850,000-square-foot acute-care tower at the hospital's main campus on Children's Drive, a project the hospital has said represents the largest investment in its history at $1.27 billion, according to Healthcare Design Magazine. The tower is slated to add more than 430 beds and will house oncology care, emergency and critical care services, an expanded surgical area, and a three-floor neonatal intensive care unit when it opens in 2028.
That kind of expansion doesn't come cheap, and the City of Columbus has taken notice. Columbus City Council approved an updated tax incentive agreement in July 2025 extending the hospital's income tax breaks through 2039, in exchange for Nationwide Children's adding 7,500 new jobs over 15 years as part of its campus development, per WOSU Public Media. The hospital's finances back up the scale of that bet: Nationwide Children's reached $4.3 billion in annual revenue while adding more than 1,100 jobs over a two-year span, according to financial data reported in May by Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther's office.
East Main Street's Broader Transformation
The hospital's new block also lands squarely on East Main Street's revitalization corridor. The site sits along COTA's planned $340 million LinkUS East Main Street Bus Rapid Transit line, a project projected to begin dedicated service around 2029, according to planning documents. Just two blocks west, developer Kingsley + Co. proposed Mercy on Main this past June — a $23M affordable housing makeover planned for 907–917 E. Main St., underscoring how much investment activity is converging on this stretch of the Near East Side.
The hospital's off-campus land purchases also echo a long-running pattern of community investment beyond direct patient care. Since 2008, Nationwide Children's Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families initiative and its Healthy Homes program have built or renovated more than 450 homes across 52 blocks in the South Side and Linden neighborhoods, and the Nationwide Foundation added a $10 million grant in October 2025 to expand the hospital's affordable housing programs, bringing its total contribution to the hospital to $170 million since 2006.
Whether the East Main Street block ends up serving outpatient care, administrative functions, parking, or housing remains unresolved. What's clear is that the purchase continues a steady northward creep of hospital-owned land beyond the I-70 corridor, even as Nationwide Children's — ranked the No. 1 pediatric hospital in Ohio and the Midwest for a 12th straight year and named Ohio's top large employer by Forbes in February — keeps its main campus construction as the centerpiece of its growth.
