Category Archives: Columbus Economy

Columbus Casino Most Successful in State

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After 4 previous tries, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow casinos to operate in the state’s 4 largest cities. Three years after that 2009 vote, casinos began operations in Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, with Cincinnati’s casino opening the following year in 2013.
The Columbus casino was originally supposed to be built Downtown in the Arena District. Specifically, it was supposed to be built where the Crew’s new stadium now sits. There was quite a bit of opposition to this plan given that casinos provide little to no external business traffic, and the thinking was that it would’ve caused more problems for the neighborhood than what it was worth.
So, the following year, a second statewide vote allowed for the Columbus casino to change locations to the West Side. The site that was chosen was the former Delphi plant, which had been closed since 2007. A bit of hypocrisy and irony was not lot in the demand to move the site, though. The West Side and Westland area were already in late state decline at that point, and proponents of the move claimed that the casino would help the area improve. This claim was made despite the fact that the move was initiated with the idea that it would’ve hurt the Arena District.
Still, the West Side seemed to be all for the move, as a new business- even a casino- was still better than a closed and deteriorating industrial plant.
Columbus’ Hollywood Casino opened on October 8, 2012 after about 2 years of site clearing and construction. While visions of the West Side raking in the benefits never really materialized in reality, the casino itself has gone on to great success in terms of revenue.

Initially, Cleveland- whose own Jack Casino was located in the heart of its downtown- was the highest earner by revenue in the state, Columbus passed it by 2016 and has been the state’s leader ever since.

Columbus casino Cincinnati vs Columbus

Columbus casino Cleveland vs Columbus

Columbus casino Toledo versus Columbus

All the casinos saw a 2020 drop as they were closed for 2 months and had hour restrictions into early 2021 due to the pandemic. Curiously, though, all of the casinos saw a huge increase in revenue over where they were in 2019. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

Columbus Area Housing Permits

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I talked about housing permits before- almost a decade ago now- and thought it would be a good time to update and expand the information. The following graphs detail Columbus area housing permits as they pertain to new residential units being permitted for construction.

Up first, the below graph shows all permitted units by type for the entire metro area since 1995.
Columbus area housing permits metro area total permits
What most stands out about the graph is how single-family construction dominated until the late 2000s. When the Great Recession hit, it completely changed that dynamic. Since then, multi-family units have mostly been on top in most years, perhaps because more money could be made with them with less financial risk.

Here is the permitted housing type as a % of total permitted units.
Columbus area housing permits % of total units
Between 1995-2010 the average breakdown was 67.46% Single-Family and 32.54% Multi-Family. Since 2010, the breakdown has been 48.16% Single-Family and 51.84% Multi-Family, representing a full 38.6-point margin change towards Multi-Family.

But what about what is actually getting permitted within just the city of Columbus, rather than the entire metro? City-exclusive data is available going back to 1980.
Columbus area housing permits Columbus city permits
The city experienced the same shift as the overall metro, but much more drastically.

The % of total units by type for the city shows that single-family housing has been steadily becoming a smaller part of new construction permits since around 2003.
Columbus area housing permits Columbus % of total units

Finally, let’s break down multi-family permits by total number of buildings per unit count for the city only.
Columbus area housing permits Columbus multi-family buildings
Except for during the 1990s, 5+-unit buildings have been dominant, but it seems that fewer overall buildings are being built despite total units being high, suggesting that project size has increased over the years.