Columbus' Zoning and Entitlement Process

Omar ElhagMusa, Executive Vice President at Spring Garden Lending, joins the Arcfluence Podcast to discuss Columbus’s first zoning rewrite in seventy years—Zone In Phase 1. He serves on the City’s Zoning Advisory Committee and brings a background spanning lending, policy, and small-scale residential investment. The conversation focuses on how the new code actually functions: corridor-based upzoning tied to bus rapid transit, the removal of parking minimums, and the constraints created by Columbus’s predominantly R-1 zoning. It also covers single-stair construction, the impact of entitlement risk on project feasibility, and the role of by-right development in reducing pre-development uncertainty. The episode closes on small-scale density—particularly duplexes—and the interdependence between transit and land use. Omar’s perspective reflects the overlap between financing, policy, and design, and how those systems shape what ultimately gets built. Podcast for entertainment purposes only. Not financial advice.