Columbus Zoning & Entitlement with Omar ElhagMusa
Columbus is in the middle of a zoning rewrite that will reshape more than forty-five percent of the city’s land area. The first phase focuses on primary corridors — High, Broad, Main, Livingston, Parsons — where transit investment and land use are being recalibrated together.
Omar ElhagMusa, Executive Vice President at Spring Garden Lending, served on the advisory committee for that first phase. His background spans lending, nonprofit development, and small-scale residential investment, including a duplex-heavy portfolio in Columbus.
He joined the Arcfluence Podcast to discuss how the new code is structured, where it reduces pre-development friction, and where constraints remain for projects trying to get built.
“If you know you can build by right, that is just one less hurdle in terms of pre-development expense and uncertainty. It allows for people to have more confidence in taking the risk and investing in a community.”
Zone In Phase 1: Corridor-First, Not Incremental
Phase 1 covers roughly eight percent of the city’s land area, but it concentrates on the corridors that will carry most of the city’s future growth. These are the same corridors targeted for bus rapid transit investment, beginning with West Broad.
The sequencing matters. Rather than applying incremental changes across the entire city, Columbus is aligning zoning capacity with infrastructure investment. The assumption is that transit viability and density need to be introduced together, not staged independently.
Parking Minimums: Cost, Not Ideology
The most consequential change in Phase 1 is the removal of minimum parking requirements along these corridors. This does not eliminate parking. It transfers the decision to the project level.
The underlying constraint is cost. Structured parking, particularly underground, is difficult to finance in mid-rise construction even with incentives. Requiring two spaces per unit in transit-served, amenity-rich corridors forces a cost structure that suppresses density.
“It is insane to mandate that much parking when you have a building on a corridor with tons of amenities. Certain parts of Columbus, you can already have a car-light lifestyle.”
The shift is less about urban design preference and more about capital feasibility. Removing the requirement allows projects to align parking supply with actual demand rather than regulatory assumptions.
The R-1 Constraint
A large portion of Columbus remains zoned for single-family use on relatively large lots. This creates a structural limitation on incremental density.
Older cities developed mixed-use, pedestrian-scaled neighborhoods before the widespread adoption of single-use zoning. Columbus did not. As a result, many of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods are the ones built before those constraints were codified.
“It is very inefficient to have one zoning for the majority of your city.”
The current rewrite attempts to introduce more flexibility, but the baseline condition remains a constraint on both supply and typology.
Single-Stair Buildings and the Missing Middle
Building code, not just zoning, shapes what can be built. One example is the requirement for two staircases in most buildings above three stories. This effectively eliminates smaller apartment buildings on constrained urban sites.
Other countries, including Canada, allow single-stair construction under specific conditions without worse fire safety outcomes. In the U.S., the requirement increases building footprint and cost, limiting the feasibility of three- to six-unit infill projects.
Omar’s position is pragmatic: three-story walk-ups can function with a single stair, but beyond that, additional egress and vertical circulation become necessary.
The implication is that a portion of “missing middle” housing is constrained by code assumptions that may not align with current safety data or urban needs.
By-Right Development and Capital Flow
From a lending perspective, certainty is a primary variable. Each variance, rezoning, or discretionary approval introduces both cost and risk into pre-development.
By-right development reduces that uncertainty. If a project conforms to the code, it can proceed without additional approvals.
“If you know you can build by right, that is just one less hurdle in terms of pre-development expense and uncertainty.”
The impact is not theoretical. Reduced entitlement risk lowers the cost of capital and increases the number of projects that can move forward.
Arcfluence’s Infill Duplex illustrates this dynamic. The project required variances to achieve full-lot efficiency on a narrow infill parcel. Under a by-right framework, that same outcome would be faster and more repeatable.
Infill Duplex — Arcfluence’s boutique duplex on a narrow Columbus infill lot. Variances enabled full-lot efficiency.
The Duplex as a Baseline Intervention
Much of the housing discussion focuses on large-scale development, but smaller interventions can materially affect supply.
A duplex doubles unit count on a given lot without significantly changing neighborhood form or infrastructure demand. In many parts of Columbus, that option is not currently available.
“The duplexes in my portfolio just work better. They take up the same space as a single family but they do not cause any additional stress on the neighborhood.”
Comparatively, cities like Cincinnati allow more variation in small-scale multifamily, resulting in a broader range of housing types.
Density and Transit: Interdependence
Transit and density are interdependent systems. Transit requires sufficient ridership to justify investment; density requires transit to support reduced parking and alternative mobility.
Columbus is attempting to align these systems along defined corridors. The sequencing is not perfect, and not all corridors have secured transit funding.
“Even though it does not currently have funding for BRT on that corridor, at least if you up-zone the area now, that will create the demand for it.”
The strategy assumes that zoning capacity can precede and help justify infrastructure investment, rather than waiting for full funding before enabling development.
Why This Matters in Practice
The significance of the zoning rewrite is not conceptual. It changes the parameters under which projects are evaluated, financed, and built.
Omar’s perspective is useful because it sits across three roles that are usually siloed: lender, policy advisor, and small-scale investor. Each role evaluates risk differently, but all are sensitive to the same underlying variables — cost, time, and certainty.
For architects and developers, the outcome is straightforward. Fewer discretionary processes, lower parking requirements, and clearer entitlements increase the range of viable projects. The remaining constraints — building code, financing assumptions, and legacy zoning — continue to define the outer limits of what gets built.
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