HOMETOWN PRIDE
Developer Equity plans $150M multiuse project near its headquarters in Hilliard
A major development planned for Hilliard is serving as a homecoming of sorts for its developer, Equity.
Even though Equity has been around for more than 30 years and is a nationally recognized health care developer, it is not widely known in central Ohio.
The company, owned by the Wathen family, hopes the 22-acre, $150 million project, called Truepointe, will change that.
“This is very important to our company,” Equity founder and CEO Steve Wathen said. “I’d call it an intentional push into increasing our exposure and position in the central Ohio marketplace.
“I’ve spent a lot of the company’s time and resources and skills over the last 20 years growing in other cities and states such as Florida and Texas. But we’re a Columbus family, a Hilliard family, and realized we should have a bigger role in our home market.”
Truepointe is planned for the east side of Interstate 270 immediately south of Equity’s corporate headquarters at 4653 Trueman Blvd.
It will extend Equity’s campus and include approximately 205,000 square feet of offices, 20,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space and 334 apartments in multiple buildings.
The initial layout of the development features two office buildings, eight apartment buildings, and one retail and restaurant building with apartments above. The plan also calls for 1,627 parking spaces -- 750 of them in a garage and the rest surface spaces.
Wathen and his son Austin noted that the plan could change, but said offices remain the biggest priority. (Another son, Patrick, is also with the firm.)
“The city of Hilliard is going to want to see the office component before the residential,” Austin Wathen said. “Hilliard’s strategic plan has an emphasis on freeway-visible office, so we’re excited to work with them on this.”
Even though the coronavirus pandemic has damaged the office and retail market, the Wathens
are confident that there will be demand, especially since they don’t plan to break ground on Truepointe until the end of 2021.
“We view COVID as a short-term phenomenon,” Steve Wathen said. “Will office usage change? Absolutely. But companies have to function, companies have to continue to grow, and the projections for central Ohio growth, Columbus growth, are spectacular.”
Austin Wathen said initial conversations with potential tenants have been encouraging.
“The pandemic adds an element we couldn’t have prepared for, but we’ve had preliminary conversations with office and retail tenants that give us the confidence to launch the project now,” he said.
While Truepointe might be Equity’s most visible central Ohio development, it is far from the first. Among the company’s other Columbus-area projects is Ohiohealth’s Westerville campus.
Experts say COVID-19 is encouraging sales by reminding stuck-at-home workers of the limitations of their home and yard. Mortgage rates, which remain below 3% for a 30-year loan, are helping to prime the pump.
“There may also be an element of migration away from crowded urban areas to more suburban or rural areas in order to have more ‘space,’” Nationwide economist Daniel Vielhaber said.
But the big driver of prices is an extreme shortage of homes on the market. As of the end of July, 2,955 homes were for sale in central Ohio, compared with 5,009 a year ago.
The number of central Ohio homes for sale, which has been low for years, dropped sharply in the spring as homeowners chose to stay put during the pandemic. That trend continued in July, as the number of new listings remained below year-ago levels.
Buyers are forced to act quickly or lose deals. Homes that sold during July had been listed only 25 days on average. Lower-priced homes went even faster: Homes under $350,000 sold in an average of 20 days; homes over $700,000 took 71 days to sell.
The lack of existing homes for sale has provided a boon to central Ohio new home builders, some of whom are having a record summer.
“Although the shortage of new homes built over the past decade has contributed to our housing shortage, our local builders have been very active this summer, providing a welcome influx of new home inventory,” Mills said.
Home sales and prices also jumped throughout the state and nation.
In Ohio, both sales and prices were up 8.6% from a year ago, led by big gains in smaller markets such as Marion and Sandusky.
Across the country, sales leaped 24.7% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.86 million. That followed a 20.7% spike in June.
“The housing market is well past the recovery phase and is now booming with higher home sales compared to the pre-pandemic days,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors.
“With the sizable shift in remote work, current homeowners are looking for larger homes, and this will lead to a secondary level of demand even into 2021.”
Matthew Speakman, an economist with the real estate service Zillow, noted that rising prices eventually could take a toll on sales.
“Rapid home price appreciation might limit the number of buyers who can benefit from these otherwise rosy buying conditions,” he said in a news release.
“But for now, the housing market is red hot and homes are flying off the shelves.’’ jweiker@dispatch.com @Jimweiker