A new industrial giant is rising just west of Columbus. Ambrose has broken ground on Building II at Columbus Logistics Park–West in West Jefferson, Ohio, a speculative warehouse that will span roughly 1.07 million square feet once it's finished.
The project marks the second building within a 169-acre logistics park located about 20 miles west of downtown Columbus, according to ConnectCRE. ARCO is serving as general contractor on the project, with design work handled by ATA Architects, while a Columbus-based Colliers International team is managing leasing and marketing for the site. Ambrose has also partnered with Bank OZK on the construction loan backing the build.
Building II is designed with 110 loading docks, four drive-in doors, a 40-foot clear height and an 8-inch unreinforced concrete slab, according to specifications listed by Ambrose. The building will also include a 2,800-square-foot office area, 461 auto-parking spaces and 245 trailer-parking spots, with a minimum divisibility of 531,000 square feet for tenants who don't need the entire footprint. Ambrose is targeting LEED Silver certification for the structure, and a 15-year, 100-percent tax abatement is in place for the project.
A Fully Leased First Phase Sets the Stage
Building II isn't the park's first chapter. Building I, a 715,000-square-foot warehouse completed in 2022, is already fully leased to GXO and FST Logistics, per the same ConnectCRE report. At full buildout, Columbus Logistics Park–West is planned to include three buildings total, positioning the site as a long-term logistics hub rather than a one-off development.
Completion for Building II is expected in September 2027, according to a listing on Zoomprospector. The park's location gives it access to Interstate 70 and sits close to Rickenbacker International Airport and nearby intermodal logistics terminals, which makes the site appealing for distribution operations looking to move goods quickly across the region, as noted by CommercialSearch.
Columbus Industrial Demand Keeps Climbing
The timing lines up with a broader surge in industrial activity nationally. U.S. industrial market fundamentals continued to improve in the third quarter of 2026, with demand accelerating and vacancy declining, according to Colliers. Net absorption nationally hit its strongest quarterly total since 2022 and outpaced new supply for a second straight quarter, while the construction pipeline kept expanding even as developers moved cautiously.
That momentum is playing out locally too. The Columbus region recorded 10.8 million square feet of year-to-date net absorption, and direct vacancy in the market fell from 5.0 percent to 4.1 percent, per Colliers' third-quarter report as cited by CommercialSearch. Vacancy for industrial blocks between 400,000 and 600,000 square feet — the size range relevant to large speculative projects like Building II — sat even lower at 3.1 percent, the same report found. Industrial space delivered in the Columbus region since 2022 has reached roughly 93 percent occupied or leased, and new buildings in that window have stabilized in an average of 16.4 months.
Other Developers Are Betting on Columbus, Too
Ambrose isn't the only firm chasing that demand around the region. Trident Capital Group and O'Connor Capital Partners recently closed a joint venture with Clarion Partners for the next phase of the Rickenbacker Industrial Center, a 959,579-square-foot speculative building on 57.30 acres that broke ground with delivery targeted for the first quarter of 2027, according to ConnectCRE. That project will include 104 dock doors and space for 238 trailers and 336 cars.
VanTrust Real Estate has also started construction on a 1-million-square-foot speculative warehouse in nearby Commercial Point, which REjournals describes as the largest speculative building in the Rickenbacker submarket and one of the largest in the region. That project sits within the 900-acre Rickenbacker Exchange, which can accommodate another 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space, and represents VanTrust's eighth speculative industrial building in Central Ohio, according to REjournals.
Ambrose, for its part, isn't slowing down beyond Ohio either. The company broke ground earlier this month on two additional speculative industrial buildings in the Midwest, located at Indianapolis Logistics Park-Northwest in Whitestown, Indiana, according to CommercialSearch. Those buildings, totaling about 947,000 square feet combined, make up the second phase of that master-planned campus and are slated for completion in summer 2027, with potential uses spanning bulk distribution, light manufacturing or advanced manufacturing.
