What Does the Aldi Polaris Project Mean for Westerville Homes?

Westerville approved an Aldi-anchored mixed-use development at Polaris Parkway and Worthington Road, and the question I keep getting from people who own near there is simple. Is this good or bad for my home value? Council approved it unanimously on January 20, 2026, with 12 buildings and more than 220,000 square feet of office space.

Mostly good over time, with a construction window you pay for first. The project also changed since it was first pitched, and a few numbers that circulated last year are out of date. Below is what council actually approved, what homes around the site sold for in 2026, and how I would think about it as an owner or a buyer.

What is getting built at Polaris Parkway and Worthington Road?

The project is called Zumstein South in city planning documents. It covers 37 acres at the southeast corner of Polaris Parkway and Worthington Road, part of 127 acres that were once the Zumstein Farm. The developer, NP Limited Partnership, has owned the site since 2006 and is the same company behind much of the Polaris-area development.

Westerville City Council voted 5-2 in early December 2025 to postpone a final decision while a dispute over road construction played out, per The Westerville News. On January 20, 2026, council unanimously approved the amended development plan, as the Columbus Dispatch reported.

The plan that passed is not the one that was first filed, and the office piece got bigger.

Component	July 2025 proposal	Plan approved January 20, 2026
Total buildings	13	12
Office	8 buildings, 178,000 sq ft	7 buildings, more than 220,000 sq ft
Aldi ("grocery/retail")	21,000 sq ft	21,000 sq ft
Restaurants	2 buildings, 10,000 sq ft total	2 buildings, 10,000 sq ft total
Retail	8,000 sq ft	8,000 sq ft
Food court or brewery	19,000 sq ft	15,600 sq ft

Source: July 2025 figures from the Columbus Dispatch (July 29, 2025) and WCMH (August 4, 2025); January 2026 figures from the Columbus Dispatch (January 21, 2026).

So the office component grew by more than 42,000 square feet even as the building count dropped. That matters more for housing demand than the grocery store does. A grocery store changes convenience. Office space, once it leases, changes who works within a five-minute drive.

This plugs into the broader Polaris and Westar mixed-use corridor Westerville has been building around for decades.

How will traffic get in and out of the site?

This is the first concern I hear from owners near Polaris, so let's get it out of the way. Yes, daily trips go up. A grocery anchor, two restaurants and seven office buildings at a busy intersection add volume, and no site plan erases that.

What the approved plan does is spread the access out. Per the Dispatch's description of the site plan, the Aldi will face Polaris Parkway and sit southwest of a new signalized intersection where an internal road meets Polaris, across from the Chick-fil-A at 680 Polaris Parkway. West of that signal there will be a right-in, right-out entrance on Polaris. On the other side, the site gets two full-access points from Worthington Road.

That internal road and the second signal give cars a way to move between Worthington Road and Polaris Parkway inside the site rather than stacking up at the corner. How well it works will depend on signal timing once it opens. Construction and signal work will make the corner feel worse before it feels better.

If you live directly on Polaris Parkway or Worthington Road in that stretch, you will notice it during construction. If you are a few streets off the main roads, the design keeps most of the new trips on the arterials. The Polaris Parkway connector road piece covers the broader traffic picture on this corridor.

How many jobs are in the Polaris and Westar corridor?

The city's history of the district, Westar: 25 Years in the Making, puts the count at over 10,000 jobs in Westar, built up since the city annexed 941 acres of southern Delaware County in the mid-1990s and landed Liebert Global in 1999. Vertiv's global headquarters, DHL Supply Chain's North American headquarters and The Marzetti Company's headquarters are all there today.

More is coming on the same road. NP Limited's Galaxy at Polaris project, a roughly $269 million development on a 30-acre site between Interstate 71 and Westerville's Medical Mile, had a first phase with 289 apartments, a parking garage with more than 700 spaces and 37,000 square feet of commercial space, per WCMH's August 2025 report. Its planned second phase spans 1.7 million square feet with retail, apartments, office, restaurants and a grocery store. A mile east, the city has spent more than $30 million opening 88 acres of new office and flex sites at the East of Africa Road project.

Zumstein South adds frontline retail and restaurant jobs right away, and office jobs as those seven buildings lease. That raises both the daytime population and the number of people who would like to live close to where they work.

What are homes near the Aldi site selling for in 2026?

I pull the closed sales around any project like this before I say what it means for anyone's house. These are straight-line distances from the Polaris Parkway and Worthington Road intersection.

Distance from Polaris Pkwy and Worthington Rd	2026 sales	Median sale price	Median $/sq ft	Median days on market	Sold at or above list	Active listings (Oct. 6)
Under 1 mile	25	$720,000	$205	5	60%	0
1 to 2 miles	116	$462,500	$216	4	67%	16
2 to 3 miles	286	$491,250	$212	5	64%	51
All within 3 miles	427	$485,000	$212	5	65%	67

Source: Columbus REALTORS MLS, single family residences closed January 1 to September 21, 2026, deduplicated by listing number, sales under $40,000 or 400 sq ft excluded. Distance from 40.1452, -82.9563 (OpenStreetMap). Active listings are status Active only, single family, from the site's IDX feed on October 6, 2026.

The under-1-mile ring is small and skews high because it includes newer, larger homes, with a median of 3,268 square feet. Look at price per square foot instead and the rings line up closely, $205 to $216. There was not a single active single family listing within a mile on October 6. Inside 3 miles, 427 sales over about 8.7 months is roughly 49 a month against 67 active listings, about 1.4 months of supply.

The school district mix is the other thing to notice. Of those 427 sales, 194 were in Westerville City Schools, 178 in Olentangy, 51 in Worthington and 4 in Columbus City Schools. This corner sits near where several districts meet, so two houses a half mile apart can carry different districts and different tax bills. My post on a Westerville address versus Westerville City Schools goes into that.

These are the named neighborhoods within 2 miles that had at least five sales.

Subdivision (as labeled in MLS)	2026 sales	Median price	Median $/sq ft	Median days on market	Median year built	School district	Approx. distance
Bigham Ridge	7	$859,900	$227	2	2018	Westerville City	0.9 mi
Annehurst Village	16	$426,500	$215	3.5	1973	Westerville City	1.3 mi
Highland Lakes	14	$657,500	$199	6	1998	Westerville City (13 of 14)	1.7 mi
McCammon Estates	5	$725,000	$159	2	2006	Olentangy	1.9 mi
Prestwick Commons	6	$466,250	$250	4	1999	Olentangy	1.9 mi

Source: same MLS filter, single family closings within 2 miles of the intersection, January 1 to September 21, 2026. Distance is the median for each subdivision's sales. MLS labels vary; six more sales were labeled "Annehurst" and are not included in the Annehurst Village row.

Condos are a separate market here. Within 2 miles, 96 condos closed in 2026 at a $353,200 median, with a median of 16 days on market and 48 percent selling at or above list, slower than the single family homes around them.

What does a grocery-anchored project do to home demand nearby?

Jobs plus new amenities are a textbook driver of housing demand. People who work in a corridor tend to want to live near it, and residents nearby gain a grocery, restaurants and office services a few minutes from home. The Aldi will sit less than half a mile east of a Fresh Thyme and about two miles west of Meijer, Kroger and a Giant Eagle Market District, per the Dispatch, so it fills in a stretch rather than giving the area its first grocery.

In my experience, the homes that hold value best through a project like this have easy access to the corridor without fronting the busiest roads. A home two streets off Worthington Road has a different profile than one facing Polaris Parkway. That gap tends to widen while construction is active and shrink once the work is done.

What should I do if I own a home near Polaris right now?

If you own near this corner, the project is one more input to your pricing, not a reason to rush or wait on its own. Selling during the messy middle of construction, when traffic cones are out and the buildings are half done, can mean some buyer hesitation on homes right on the main roads. The 2026 numbers show well-located homes off those roads selling in days.

If you are buying, the thin supply means you are not likely to find a construction discount on a well-priced home in Bigham Ridge or Highland Lakes. Where there can be room is on homes that face Polaris Parkway or Worthington Road directly, and those deserve a harder look at noise and access, not just price.

None of this is guaranteed. Office lease-up is never instant, construction schedules move, and the traffic plan depends on execution. But the corridor is adding jobs and amenities around a housing stock that is already short on inventory.

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Curious what Zumstein South means for your address? I'll put together a pricing snapshot and commute read for your street. Book a time at calendly.com/adam-geuy or call or text 937-239-2919.

Adam Geuy, Realtor, Blacktree Realty, ABR/PSA/SRS. License #2020007964.

I work this corridor constantly, and a grocery anchor has helped nearby homes more than it has hurt them. The construction window is the cost you pay first.