Etna's 16 Warehouses: How the Amazon Fulfillment Center Changed Traffic on National Road and Ohio 310

Etna Township, a small community about 20 miles east of downtown Columbus in Licking County, now hosts 16 warehouse and distribution facilities, anchored by Amazon's 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center that opened in September 2016 on U.S. 40 (National Road) just west of Ohio 310. Documented resident concerns in Etna center on truck traffic and congestion, not on residential street parking, and public records show the township, county, and ODOT responded with a widened SR 310 and a rebuilt I-70 interchange. Here is what actually happened to traffic in the neighborhoods closest to the facilities, the 2026 price picture in Etna, Pataskala, and Reynoldsburg, and the checklist we use when a buyer is looking at a home near an industrial corridor.

Which distribution centers sit near Columbus neighborhoods, and how close are the closest homes?

The anchor is Amazon CMH1, an 855,000-square-foot sortable fulfillment center at 11999 National Rd SW in Etna Township (Pataskala address, ZIP 43062), on a 96-acre site between I-70 and U.S. 40 and roughly a mile from the closest residential subdivision. It opened September 14, 2016. A second Etna-area Amazon-linked facility is listed at 8591 Mink St SW in Pataskala, near the Global Way and Mink Street industrial area.

On the south side of the metro, Amazon CMH2 is a non-sort fulfillment center at 6050 Gateway Ct on the Groveport-Obetz line in the Rickenbacker area, opened in 2016. The closest residential subdivisions in Etna include Royal Acres (a Fischer Homes community off Mink Street SW, about a mile from the warehouse), plus Smoke Creek, Brandy Mill Estates, Cumberland Trail and Cumberland Crossing, and Orchard Glen. In Pataskala, the Fischer Homes communities Heron Manor and Ponds at Hazelton Crossing sit roughly three to five miles north of the center. Near CMH2 in Groveport and Obetz, buyers find older ranch homes and established subdivisions, with the historic Groveport houses near Main Street about three miles from the facility.

The practical takeaway for buyers: the closest residential street to the Etna warehouse is under two minutes by car, which is exactly the kind of proximity worth testing at shift-change and delivery hours before you commit to an offer.

How much did the Amazon fulfillment center actually change traffic on National Road and Ohio 310?

At the 2016 opening, Etna Township Trustee John Carlisle publicly conceded there would be traffic issues and said Amazon had not answered the township's questions about its schedule of truck arrivals, according to the Newark Advocate. Township board minutes from February 15, 2022 record a resident raising tractor-trailer traffic concerns, including trucks running red lights to turn left onto Etna Parkway or into the Amazon site. Reporting from WSYX/ABC6 in August 2022 captured neighbors' concern that Etna was becoming the "warehouse capital of Ohio" as a 697,000-square-foot warehouse rose on Mink Road, and a February 2024 community-planning story in the Farmers' Advance noted that as Amazon, FedEx, Kohl's, and other warehouses were built, many residents were unhappy with how their rural community had changed.

The public response is measurable. ODOT's I-70/SR 310 interchange project replaced and widened the SR 310 bridge deck over I-70 to six lanes, with the project nearing completion by September 2017. A Licking County Transportation Improvement District project then widened SR 310 from two lanes to five lanes between U.S. 40 and the I-70 interchange, with signal upgrades at U.S. 40/SR 310 and a new signal at Pike Street/SR 310, contracted in 2017 and completed through 2018. ODOT's I-70 Far East Freeway program has continued interchange improvements along I-70 in Licking County since summer 2022. The current weekday traffic counts on SR 310 and U.S. 40 are published in ODOT's TIMS database and MORPC's Traffic Count Database System, both linked below, so you can pull the exact AADT numbers for the segment nearest a home you are considering.

Table: Distribution facilities, closest neighborhoods, commute context, and 2026 median price context. Commute estimates are geography-based approximations for typical conditions; prices are published 2026 market medians from Redfin and Zillow, accessed October 12, 2026, and vary by source and month.

What about street parking near the Etna and Groveport facilities?

This is the question where the documented record is important to get right. In the Columbus-area cases, the reported impacts residents raised in meeting minutes and local news center on truck traffic, red-light running at the Etna Parkway intersection, congestion at the SR 310 and National Road corridor, and the sheer number of warehouse buildings, not on delivery vans or employee cars spilling onto residential streets. Fulfillment centers like CMH1 and CMH2 keep employee parking on site and operate on warehouse shifts, so the street-level effect shows up as truck and commuter volume on the arterials, not curb crowding in subdivisions.

The residential street parking effect is more strongly associated with last-mile delivery stations that run high-frequency van routes into neighborhoods. A University of Washington study found that neighborhoods within about two miles of Amazon last-mile delivery facilities saw roughly double the truck and delivery traffic, and a 2021 Consumer Reports investigation documented congestion, noise, and pollution near warehouses across the country. If the industrial building near a home you are considering is a delivery station rather than a fulfillment center, that is the configuration where vans and parking pressure on nearby streets are the documented pattern.

What should a buyer check before purchasing near an industrial hub?

In our experience helping buyers weigh homes near logistics corridors, the difference between a comfortable purchase and a regret comes down to testing the street at the wrong hours. Drive the route to the warehouse at shift change (roughly 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.), pull the published traffic counts for the exact road segment, and check the township or city zoning map for approved and pending industrial uses on adjacent parcels. Etna's own community-planning process is a useful example: after years of warehouse growth, the township opened a plan update focused on the type of development residents want, which is exactly the kind of document to read when you want to know what could be built next to a street you are buying on.

This guide is general market education, not legal, tax, or municipal advice. Zoning and land-use questions are local, so verify current approvals and pending applications with the township or city planning office, and work with a title attorney and qualified professionals for your specific situation.