DHL Expands in Ohio With 755 KSF Building

DHL’s upcoming facility in Violet Township, Ohio, is shaping up southeast of Columbus. Image courtesy of DHL

DHL Supply Chain is expanding its footprint in its home state of Ohio with a new 755,000-square-foot distribution center in Violet Township, not far from its U.S. headquarters in Westerville, in the Columbus area.

The distribution center, slated to open in the second quarter of 2024, will bring DHL’s total footprint to more than 15 million square feet in Ohio and more than 161 million square feet across the U.S. The company has already broken ground on the facility, which is expected to create approximately 200 jobs for the region.

Carl DeLuca, DHL’s head of real estate solutions for the Americas, said in a prepared statement that the company’s in-house real estate platform, DHL Real Estate Solutions, designs its warehouse facilities so their customers can focus on their core business needs.

The warehouse will prioritize digitalization investments as well as sustainable building planning and construction. The facility’s sustainable features will include LED lighting with smart controls, clerestory windows for natural lighting, electric vehicle charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles and cars, solar PV-ready roof, native landscaping and rainwater harvesting for landscape irrigation.

DHL credited JobsOhio, OneColumbus, ODOT, Fairfield County and Violet Township with helping to bring the warehouse to the site.

DHL’s expansive growth

The global logistics and express shipping company has been actively expanding throughout the U.S. Earlier this month, the DHL eCommerce division opened a new LEED Silver-certified, 352,000-square-foot distribution center in Chicago.

Late last month, DHL announced it was investing $192 million to expand its Americas global hub based at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to support its growing aviation fleet. The LEED-certified, carbon-neutral aviation maintenance hangar will have 305,000 square feet and provide additional space for storage, offices, three maintenance parking gates and eight new aircraft gates.

Also, on the aviation side of the business, DHL Express opened its new $84.5 million Americas hub based at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in early July. The 100,000-square-foot hub will have direct connections between 19 cities in the Southeast and key global markets, including Europe. Additional plans call for connections to Hong Kong, Mexico, the U.K. and Puerto Rico.

In June 2022, DHL Supply Chain acquired Building 5, a 979,264-square-foot industrial property in the 2.4 million-square-foot master-planned Whiteland Exchange Business Park at I-65 and Whiteland Road in Whiteland, Ind., from Jones Development.

Several months later, in October, DHL Supply Chain announced it was providing warehousing and logistics services to U.K.-based Boohoo at a 1.1 million-square-industrial facility in Elizabethtown, Pa., owned by First Industrial Realty Trust. DHL’s support allows the fashion retailer to offer next-day service to the New York City metro region.