Columbus Permitted 10 Demolitions in October 2026

Columbus issued 10 demolition permits in October 2026, fewer than half of September's 21 but roughly even with the 9 it issued in October 2025, city building records show. Eight of the 10 were commercial, led by a permit to raze a 28,010-square-foot building on East Main Street.

How CREN built the count

A demolition permit is the city's legal sign-off before a structure can come down, recording the site address, the applicant's declared cost to raze the building, and the date the permit was issued. CREN counted every October 2026 record in the city's public Building Permits dataset whose permit type ended in the word Demolition, a feed Columbus releases into the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. The query, run on November 3, 2026, returned 10 records, from which CREN pulled each site's address, ZIP code, declared value, parcel number and issue date.

A return to the monthly norm

October's 10 permits sat well below September's 21, the busiest month of 2026, but close to the 9 the city issued in October 2025, leaving September as the year's clear outlier. The monthly count has swung widely in 2026, from a low of 3 in February to the September peak, with 18 in January, 12 in March, 10 in April, 18 in May, 7 in June, 11 in July and 17 in August. Through the first 10 months of the year, Columbus has issued 127 demolition permits, up modestly from 121 over the same stretch of 2025.

What came down, and where

October's teardowns skewed commercial, and the costliest clustered on the city's east and northeast sides. The single largest by declared cost was a $383,250 permit to raze a 28,010-square-foot commercial building at 1505 E. Main St. on the Near East Side, ZIP 43205. Next came a $195,000 teardown at 417 S. Weyant Ave. on the far East Side (43213) and a $148,000 permit at 835 N. Cassady Ave. in the northeast (43219).

A $100,000 permit covered the month's other large footprint, a 27,000-square-foot structure at 4700 E. 5th Ave. (43219), and a $65,000 permit cleared a 17,880-square-foot building at 42 W. Jenkins Ave. on the South Side (43207). Two neighboring commercial parcels on Dublin Road, both filed by the same contractor, drew a $40,000 permit at 1029 Dublin Rd. and a $13,000 permit at 1033 Dublin Rd. (both 43215). A smaller $5,000 commercial permit covered 586 American Blvd. (43223).

Only two homes on the list

The month's two residential teardowns were a $7,000 permit at 6680 Maple Canyon Ave. in the far northeast (43229) and a $12,900 permit at 309 Whitethorne Ave. on the Hilltop (43223). Across all 10 sites, applicants declared a combined $969,150 in teardown costs, of which the eight commercial permits accounted for $949,250.

No protected buildings this month

CREN checked all 10 October addresses against three of the city's own historic-preservation records: the Historic Districts map of its 18 architecturally protected areas, the city's historic and design review areas, and the Register of Historic Properties, its list of individually designated landmarks. None of the 10 sites fell inside a historic district or a review area, and none matched a registered landmark. A demolition inside a historic district or affecting a registered property would trigger separate review by the city's Historic Resources Commission; none of October's teardowns required that step.

What the permits do not settle

A demolition permit records legal permission to raze a structure, not proof that a crew has finished the work, so these are permit counts rather than confirmed teardowns. One site can also draw more than one permit: the two Dublin Road filings sit on separate but neighboring parcels under the same contractor.

A declared value is the applicant's own estimate of teardown cost, not a county-assessed value or a sale price, and the record says nothing about what, if anything, will replace a cleared building. The city updates its permit feed daily, and late entries can still lift October's total after this run. CREN will revisit the larger commercial sites, including 1505 E. Main St. and 4700 E. 5th Ave., when November permits close, watching for new construction filings on the cleared footprints.