The Village at Central College expansion is one of the clearest signals Westerville has put out in a while that apartment demand along Sunbury and Central College isn't going anywhere.
Columbus-based developer Casto is moving forward with plans to add 232 multifamily units plus two small commercial spaces on roughly 16 acres at the Sunbury and Central College intersection. Westerville's Planning Commission has already recommended approval, and the proposal now sits with City Council for final action.
What's Actually Being Proposed
The 232 units would expand the existing Village at Central College complex, which already anchors a mixed-density pocket that includes Ravine at Central College and several higher-density single-family neighborhoods nearby.
The commercial component is small: two spaces along the road frontage. The real question is how those spaces get programmed. Daily-needs retail (a coffee shop, a dry cleaner, a sandwich spot) does more for the corridor's walkability and the adjacent residential market than another office suite would. Site plans and zoning conditions will spell that out once Council acts.
Why Developers Keep Targeting This Intersection
The market studies attached to nearby proposals, including Westerville Crossing, showed strong absorption demand in this submarket. New projects in the corridor have reportedly been able to undercut prevailing market rents by roughly 20% and still lease up at pace.
Average rents in Westerville have been running from just over $1,000 for studios to just above $2,000 for three-bedrooms at the time of this writing. That rent range, combined with the employment concentration along the Sunbury corridor, the New Albany business campuses, and the ongoing Intel-area build-out, keeps developer confidence in this submarket elevated.
Put differently: this isn't speculative overbuilding. The underlying demand drivers are real.
What This Means If You Own Near Sunbury and Central College
More apartment supply in a corridor changes the composition of who is shopping nearby properties, including for-sale homes.
Here's the honest read: professionally managed, well-designed apartment communities tend to bring more consistent activity to a corridor. More occupied units mean more local retail spend, which supports the businesses that make an area desirable in the first place. That's good for adjacent single-family values over the medium term.
The corridors in Central Ohio that have held and grown resale value best are almost never purely single-use bedroom communities. The ones that mix quality apartments, townhomes, single-family, and walkable retail near job centers outperform over time. The Sunbury-Central College pocket is building toward that mix.
Short-term, the construction phase is the real disruption risk: traffic, staging, noise. The site plan and zoning conditions that come out of Council approval will determine how the construction access is managed and what buffering requirements exist between the new buildings and existing neighborhoods.
What to Watch at City Council
The Planning Commission recommendation is a meaningful step, but it isn't the final word. City Council will review the proposal, and that's where zoning conditions get attached or modified.
The things worth tracking as this moves through:
Building heights and setbacks. How tall do the new structures sit relative to adjacent single-family lots, and what are the required buffers? This drives how much visual and acoustic impact the expansion has on existing homes.
Traffic improvements. Sunbury Road already carries significant volume. The traffic study and any road-improvement requirements that come out of Council review will matter for the corridor's livability.
Commercial programming. As noted above, what those two commercial spaces become will shape the street-level experience of the area for years.
Construction phasing. 232 units typically get built in phases. The phasing plan determines how long the disruption window is and when the stabilized community, with all its corridor benefits, actually arrives.
The Bigger Picture on the Sunbury Corridor
This expansion doesn't sit in isolation. The Sunbury Road and Central College corridor is part of a broader pattern being studied and planned as the next wave of Westerville-area growth. The Blendon-Westerville edge, the area east of Africa Road, and the Intel-driven population growth in the northern Columbus metro are all converging here.
What that means for real estate: this pocket of 43082 and adjacent zip codes is in a land-use transition phase. That creates both opportunity and uncertainty depending on exactly where a specific parcel sits relative to what gets built.
If you own near Sunbury or Central College and want to understand how this expansion and the surrounding development pipeline affect your home's value trajectory, reach out and I'll put together an address-specific look. Phone or email works: 937.239.2919 or calendly.com/adam-geuy.
Adam Geuy, Realtor - NextHome Experience | ABR, PSA, SRS | License #202000794 Each office is independently owned and operated.