NEW ALBANY — OhioHealth will build a new $700 million hospital in New Albany on the site of the former Big Lots headquarters near Hamilton Road, the Columbus-based health system announced Wednesday, Nov. 11, according to a news release from OhioHealth reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
The campus, to be called OhioHealth New Albany Methodist Hospital, is expected to open in late 2030 with 160 inpatient beds and room to expand to 208 beds, OhioHealth said in the release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. Construction on the 600,000-square-foot project is scheduled to begin in early 2027.
About 325,000 square feet of the campus will be reimagined space in the existing headquarters complex, with 275,000 square feet of new construction, according to OhioHealth’s release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. The project puts a full hospital on ground that until recently housed the corporate offices of a national retailer — a swap that says a lot about where central Ohio’s growth is heading.
The hospital is expected to employ 140 providers and about 1,700 people in total, according to OhioHealth. For New Albany and the northeast side of Columbus, that makes the campus both a medical facility and one of the area’s largest single-site employers when it opens.
Services will include comprehensive advanced cardiac care, neuroscience, stroke care and trauma care, according to the release. Other specific services will be decided as planning continues, but OhioHealth said acute care at the new hospital will be similar to what it provides at Riverside Methodist Hospital and Grant Medical Center, its two Columbus flagships.
The location is the strategy. New Albany is one of the fastest-growing communities in central Ohio, and OhioHealth estimates roughly 340,000 central Ohioans live within 15 minutes of the Hamilton Road site, according to the release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. A hospital there shortens the drive to advanced care for families across northeast Columbus and the suburbs and counties north and east of the city.
“Central Ohio is growing and we need to make sure access to high-quality care grows with it,” Steve Markovich, president and CEO of OhioHealth, said in the release quoted by The Columbus Dispatch. “New Albany Methodist is a significant investment in the future of this region and in making care more accessible to the families we serve in northeast Columbus and communities north and east of New Albany.”
The announcement continues a busy season for Ohio health-care investment that NewsForce247 has followed across the state, from a $1 million gift expanding children’s behavioral health in the Mahoning Valley to a $50,000 state grant for Harcum House in Lancaster. OhioHealth’s New Albany project is larger than both by orders of magnitude — and its four-year runway means it will shape construction, hiring and health-care planning on the northeast side well into the next decade.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on. Confirmed from OhioHealth’s Nov. 11 release: the $700 million cost, the Hamilton Road site at the former Big Lots headquarters, 160 beds expandable to 208, construction starting in early 2027, an opening in late 2030, and about 1,700 total jobs including 140 providers. Still to come: the full service list beyond cardiac, neuroscience, stroke and trauma care, and the detailed site and building plans as the planning phase continues.
The timeline gives the region time to grow into the hospital — and gives OhioHealth time to recruit. A campus opening in late 2030 with 1,700 positions will be hiring into the same tight health-care labor market every Ohio system now competes in, and its provider count of 140 will add advanced cardiac, neuroscience and stroke capacity in a corridor that today drives into Columbus for much of that care.
What happens next is the planning phase: OhioHealth will finalize services and designs, with construction scheduled to begin in early 2027 at the former Big Lots headquarters site. When it opens in late 2030, New Albany Methodist will be the newest full hospital in one of Ohio’s fastest-growing communities — and the clearest sign yet that central Ohio’s growth map now runs through New Albany.
Photo: Sixflashphoto, CC BY-SA