Affiliated members of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council (C/COBCTC) will be at the heart of this major build, continuing to turn Central Ohio into a national datacenter hub.
Site preparation is underway on the 28-acre property located at Green Meadows Drive and Home Road in Orange Township.
The project, known as COL5, will deliver 120 megawatts of capacity at full build-out and support high-density, ultra-low-latency, sustainable infrastructure. The facility will be connected to Cologix’s four other Central Ohio locations.
The first phase, a 60,000-square-foot single-story facility, is scheduled for completion by fall 2026, with a second building to follow. According to The Columbus Dispatch, the second building will have a site capacity of roughly 95 MW and will be approximately 75,000 square feet.
According to C/COBCTC Executive Secretary-Treasurer Dorsey Hager, roughly 400 union construction workers will be working on the project. What makes this build different from other datacenter megaprojects in the region is that it will not be constructed under any agreement.
Despite no agreement, building trades members will still make up the majority of the workforce on-site.
COL5 is Denver-based Cologix’s fifth Columbus-area datacenter since entering the market in 2014, making Central Ohio the company’s largest U.S. location.
“… there’s a lot of growth going on,” Nancy Tiemeier, Cologix’s Account Director for Central Ohio, told The Columbus Dispatch about building in Central Ohio. “As far as environment, we don’t get the storms or hurricanes or earthquakes like other parts of the country. It’s also a gateway for network connections between the Midwest and the East Coast.”
Cologix’s four existing Columbus centers total 500,000 square feet and 80 megawatts, making the company the largest colocation provider in Central Ohio.
Colocation providers are data center firms that rent space within their facilities, ranging from individual racks to entire rooms or even buildings, to other companies that operate their IT systems remotely.
What’s next for Central Ohio’s datacenter growth
Cologix’s investment will not only create hundreds of good-paying union construction jobs but also reinforce the role of skilled building trades members in Central Ohio’s tech-driven economy.
“The expansion of Cologix further solidifies that Central Ohio is rapidly becoming the Silicon Heartland and our members are proud to be a part of it,” Hager said.
Looking ahead, Cologix plans even greater expansion, with work expected to begin later this year on a $7 billion, 154-acre campus in Johnstown, located in western Licking County, that could house up to eight additional datacenters.
Hager acknowledged it is still early to say if the majority of that project will go to building trades.