Four Residential Rezonings Head to Columbus's Development Commission

Four separate requests to rezone land for apartments and other housing — about 195 acres in all, across four edges of Columbus — are on the Columbus Development Commission's agenda for a public hearing on Thursday, November 12, 2026. None has yet reached City Council, which holds the final vote on each rezoning.

What the commission will hear

The hearing begins at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, 2026, in the Coleman Government Center at 111 North Front Street downtown, and the city streams it on its YouTube channel. The Development Commission is an advisory body: it reviews rezoning applications and sends a recommendation to City Council, which casts the binding vote later. Four cases sit on the zoning portion of the Development Commission's November 12 agenda, each seeking an apartment residential or planned-development zoning district.

The four sites, from 152 acres to 10

The largest by far is case Z26-027, a 151.82-acre tract at 3030 Norton Road on the city's southwest side. Forestar (USA) Real Estate Development wants to move it from rural and single-family residential zoning to a blend of a planned-unit-development district and a limited apartment residential district for what the agenda describes as single and multi-unit residential development.

The three other cases are smaller multi-unit requests: 20.37 acres at 2180 Eakin Road in the Greater Hilltop area, filed by Kittle Property Group; 12.39 acres at 1677 North Cassady Avenue on the Northeast side, filed by Metro Development III; and 10.36 acres at 3686 Gender Road on the Greater South East side, filed by T&R Properties. Together the four cover about 195 acres.

What the zoning letters mean

Three of the four requests seek a Limited Apartment Residential district, which Columbus abbreviates as L-AR-1; the Eakin Road case seeks a related apartment district the city labels L-ARLD. The leading L means the rezoning carries a limitation text, a set of written commitments on how the land may be used. Each request names a height district: the three smaller sites carry an H-35 limit, and the Norton Road request pairs an H-35 district with a taller H-60 district. The Gender Road parcel is already an apartment district, L-AR-12, so that case would shift the site from one apartment classification to another rather than from houses to apartments.

Four edges of the city

CREN mapped the four addresses with the U.S. Census Bureau's geocoder and checked each against the city's public Base Zoning Districts data. Two of the four geocode to postal addresses outside the Columbus city name — Grove City and Canal Winchester — and all four sit nearer the built edge than the core.

The city's zoning layer returns an R1, single-family classification for the Norton Road tract, matching the agenda's R-1 label, and shows no Columbus base-zoning polygon for the Cassady Avenue parcel, consistent with the agenda's note that the site is pending annexation into the city. The Norton Road case also carries an extra layer of review: the agenda routes it through both the Westland Area Commission and the Big Darby Accord Advisory Panel.

Where these applications stand

All four are applications, not approvals. As of November 10, 2026, none of the four had a rezoning ordinance on file with City Council in the city's Legistar legislative database, which places them at the recommendation stage rather than a final vote. The agenda also stops short of the detail readers most want: it lists each site's acreage and requested district but no unit counts, site plans, or building designs, and it does not say how many apartments any of the four would add. A rezoning sets what a parcel may become, not what will be built or when.

What to watch next

The next checkpoint is the commission's own vote on Thursday, when it will recommend approval, denial, or approval with conditions on each case and take comment from the area commissions and any residents who attend. Whatever the commission recommends, each rezoning still needs a City Council ordinance to take effect, and the Legistar record will show when, or whether, each of the four reaches that stage.