Zoning in Franklin County, OH: Townships, Annexation & Data Centers

Franklin County's zoning map is a genuine patchwork -- eleven townships under county zoning, six running their own commissions, and every incorporated city adding a third layer. Two of those self-zoned townships, Jefferson and Plain, happen to border one of the fastest-growing data-center corridors in the country, which makes understanding the difference between county, township, and city zoning here more than an academic exercise.

This page covers what's specific to Franklin County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

Three layers, and the map keeps shifting

Franklin County has adopted county rural zoning under ORC Chapter 303, and it currently applies in eleven townships: Blendon, Brown, Clinton, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Mifflin, Norwich, Pleasant, Sharon, and Truro. Six townships -- Jackson, Jefferson, Perry, Plain, Prairie, and Washington -- have adopted their own zoning under ORC Chapter 519 and run independent zoning commissions; county rules bar county Rural Zoning Commission appointees from even residing in those six townships, since a separate authority already governs them. Layered on top of both systems, every incorporated city and village in the county -- Columbus, Dublin, New Albany, Westerville, and the rest -- maintains its own home-rule zoning code inside its corporate limits.

What makes Franklin County different from a simpler three-way split like Clark County's is scale and motion: annexation into a fast-growing city is a constant, active process here, not a rare event. A parcel that's in a self-zoned township today can be annexed into an adjoining city within a few years, at which point it leaves that township's zoning entirely and takes on the city's code -- sometimes with a very different allowed use and density than the township ever permitted.

Jefferson and Plain Townships: at the center of the New Albany data-center boom

Jefferson Township and Plain Township -- both self-zoned, both bordering the City of New Albany on Franklin County's northeast side -- sit at the heart of what several outlets have called the birthplace of Ohio's data-center boom. Since Meta's first Ohio data center opened there in 2017, the New Albany International Business Park has grown to roughly 12,000 acres spanning Franklin and Licking counties, with Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta, and Microsoft together owning more than 5,000 of those acres. As of late 2025 and into 2026, AWS had committed $3.5 billion to build five more data centers in New Albany by 2030, and Microsoft was building a $420 million facility on nearly 200 acres.

This growth is a Franklin County (and neighboring Licking County) story specifically -- it is not connected to Intel's much-discussed semiconductor fab, which is sited in Licking County well to the east and involves an entirely different company, technology, and set of townships. For land near New Albany in Jefferson or Plain Township, the practical effect of the data-center boom is less about a single rezoning case and more about sustained pressure toward annexation: land that was unincorporated and self-zoned under the township's rules can become part of New Albany's jurisdiction, with the city's own planning and economic-development goals -- not the township's -- determining what comes next.

What this means for a buyer

If you're evaluating land in or near Jefferson or Plain Township, ask both the township and the City of New Albany directly whether any annexation petition or pre-annexation agreement currently touches or is near the parcel, since that -- more than the township's current zoning -- may determine the land's real future use and value. Even land well outside the data-center campuses themselves can see meaningful spillover effects: road and utility upgrades built to serve the campuses, and rising land values driven by proximity, both extend beyond the campus boundaries.

For land elsewhere in Franklin County's other self-zoned townships (Jackson, Perry, Prairie, Washington) or its eleven county-zoned townships, the underlying lesson still applies: confirm which of the three systems -- county, township, or an adjoining city's -- actually governs a specific parcel today, and ask directly whether any annexation or rezoning activity is pending nearby, rather than assuming today's zoning designation is a permanent feature of the land.

Zoning in Franklin County, Ohio: Eleven Zoned Townships, and a Growth Corridor Reshaping Two Others

Three layers, and the map keeps shifting

Jefferson and Plain Townships: at the center of the New Albany data-center boom

What this means for a buyer

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