Downtown Columbus Office Tower Wins 2026 Redevelopment of the Year

Washington, D.C.-based The Bernstein Cos. has converted the former Continental Centre at 150 East Gay Street into Continental Tower, a 409-unit apartment building in downtown Columbus. CoStar recognized the project as its 2026 Redevelopment of the Year, citing more than $100 million invested in a 1970s-era office building.

A 1970s Tower Gets a Residential Reboot

The Continental Centre was built in the 1970s at Gay and Third streets — one of the taller structures in the downtown Columbus skyline. Like many mid-century office towers in Midwest cities, it lost tenants steadily as employers moved to suburban campuses or newer buildings. By the time The Bernstein Cos. committed to a conversion, a substantial portion of the building was vacant.

The Bernstein Cos., headquartered in Washington, D.C., secured Ohio historic preservation tax credits in 2022 — part of the state's Historic Preservation Tax Credit program, which awards transferable credits to developers who rehabilitate historic income-producing properties in compliance with federal standards. Those credits provided a meaningful portion of the project's financing stack alongside private equity and debt. HGC Construction managed the general contracting work, and Columbus-based ArchAll Architects handled the conversion's design.

What 409 Units Look Like in This Building

The converted building holds 409 apartments — studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms — marketed as luxury rentals. Amenities include a fitness center with a spin studio, private co-working spaces, a residential lounge and clubroom on the 24th floor, an on-site market, a coffee shop, and a rooftop pool scheduled to open this month. Unit finishes, as described in the building's marketing materials, include floor-to-ceiling windows, quartz countertops, Samsung appliances, smart thermostats, soft-close cabinetry, and walk-in closets.

Continental Tower is a market-rate project — there are no income restrictions. Specific rent prices were not publicly available at publication time.

CoStar's Recognition and What It Signals

CoStar's Impact Awards are a commercial real estate industry competition that recognizes developers, owners, and projects across markets. The Redevelopment of the Year category focuses on projects that revived dormant or distressed buildings — the complexity of the conversion, the scale of investment, and the building's new role in its neighborhood all factor in.

Winning that award in Columbus carries meaning: an out-of-town developer put substantial capital into a downtown Ohio office building, not a coastal market. That is the kind of out-of-market capital deployment that tracks closely with a city's growing investment profile. For Columbus brokers, operators, and investors, the CoStar recognition is less a rubber stamp than a data point about how the city is being evaluated from outside.

Downtown Columbus Context

Continental Tower sits in the Gay Street corridor, a stretch of downtown Columbus that has drawn several residential and mixed-use projects in recent years. The corridor runs adjacent to the Short North and connects the Arena District to the Broad and High Street core. RealPage Analytics has identified Columbus as one of Ohio's most active markets for office-to-apartment conversions, alongside Cleveland and Cincinnati.

The project is part of a broader wave of downtown residential deliveries. The Merchant Building renovation targeted a fall opening several blocks away, and the Discovery District parking-lot apartment project is adding several hundred units a few blocks east. Together, these projects are testing whether downtown Columbus can absorb a meaningful increase in residential inventory at market-rate price points.

A separate office-to-residential conversion — the Nationwide-owned tower, tracked by Propmodo — would add another major residential count if it proceeds. Whether Continental Tower's lease-up pace provides confidence for that project's timing is a question the market will answer in the coming months.

What Is Not Confirmed

CREN could not confirm current occupancy rate, a timeline to stabilization, or specific rent levels at Continental Tower from publicly available sources. The Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit award amount for this project was not identified in public summaries; the Ohio Department of Development's tax credit project registry is the authoritative public record. The publication date of Columbus Underground's first-look coverage could not be confirmed precisely; CREN referenced it as recent based on the article's proximity to the rooftop pool opening.

What to Watch Next

The next verifiable checkpoint is a lease-up announcement from The Bernstein Cos. indicating the building has reached or approached stabilization, the industry benchmark for a fully leased building. If and when that figure is disclosed, it will be the clearest signal of how much demand actually exists for the new market-rate apartments at Gay and Third streets.

Longer term, the city's office-to-residential conversion pipeline will determine how much existing office stock Columbus can redirect toward housing before new ground-up construction takes over the supply role. Continental Tower is the most visible data point in that pipeline right now.