Columbus Square Shopping Center: Anchor Stores, Everyday Errands, and How It Stacks Up on the Northeast Side
Situated on Cleveland Avenue in northeast Columbus, Columbus Square Shopping Center is a strip-style retail center anchored by big-box and discount tenants, oriented toward practical, errand-driven shopping rather than leisure browsing.
What's Actually There
The center's tenant mix leans heavily toward value retail and everyday services. Big Lots has long held a anchor presence here, drawing shoppers looking for discounted furniture, seasonal goods, cleaning supplies, and food staples at prices noticeably below grocery-store norms. A Big Lots run at Columbus Square typically yields finds in the $5–$40 range for household items, with furniture pieces running higher depending on what's in rotation.
Dollar Tree fills the under-$1.25 consumables niche alongside other service-oriented tenants that have included hair care, tax preparation, and fast food outposts. The tenant mix has shifted over the years, so checking current occupancy before making a special trip for a specific store is worth doing.
The center sits along a stretch of Cleveland Avenue that connects the northeast side to downtown Columbus, placing it in a densely populated corridor with relatively limited walkable retail alternatives nearby. That geography makes it a functional stop rather than a destination.
Who This Shopping Center Suits
Residents of the northeast Columbus neighborhoods — including areas near Morse Road, Northland, and Linden — will find Columbus Square a logical stop for routine purchases: cleaning products, small appliances, snacks, party supplies, and budget home goods. It's genuinely useful for anyone stocking a first apartment or stretching a household budget without driving to a larger retail corridor.
It does not suit shoppers looking for apparel, specialty groceries, electronics, or anything requiring comparison shopping across multiple full-service retailers. There are no department stores, no mid-range apparel chains, and no entertainment anchors. If your list includes those categories, you're better served heading to Morse Road itself, where a Walmart Supercenter and additional strip retail create a denser cluster of options within a short drive.
Comparing It to Other Columbus Shopping Areas
The most direct comparison is the Northland corridor roughly a mile east, where the former Northland Mall site and surrounding strip development on Morse Road offer a much broader retail selection including Walmart, multiple fast food chains, auto parts stores, and specialty services all concentrated together. For a single errand, Columbus Square is fine. For a multi-stop shopping trip, Morse Road covers more ground.
On the opposite side of the city, shopping centers like Westland or Eastland Mall (now repurposing into mixed-use) historically offered anchor department stores and enclosed mall formats, but Columbus Square was never positioned in that tier. It competes more directly with neighborhood strip centers like those along Livingston Avenue or the South High Street corridor, which serve similar functions for their surrounding communities.
For discount home goods specifically, Columbus Square's Big Lots faces competition from the Ollie's Bargain Outlet locations that have opened in Columbus-area retail corridors over the past several years, including locations accessible from I-270. Ollie's tends to carry more irregular and closeout merchandise, while Big Lots carries a broader, more consistent food and household selection.
First Visit Logistics
Parking is surface-lot, free, and generally plentiful outside peak weekend hours. The center is directly accessible from Cleveland Avenue, and there is bus service along Cleveland Avenue via COTA, making it one of the more transit-accessible strip centers on the northeast side. Route 2 runs along Cleveland Avenue with stops nearby, which is relevant for shoppers who rely on Columbus's transit network.
Anchor store hours at the Columbus Square Big Lots generally run 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, though those hours can vary by season and should be confirmed directly before a trip. Dollar Tree locations in Columbus typically operate 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, but individual store hours vary.
Practical Note
Columbus Square works best as a supplementary stop rather than a primary destination. If you're already on Cleveland Avenue heading toward downtown or coming back from I-270, it adds minimal detour time and handles the discount-household-goods errand efficiently. For a dedicated shopping trip from across the city, the Morse Road corridor delivers more options per mile. The center's real value is geographic: it sits in a part of northeast Columbus where comparable retail density is thinner than in the city's larger commercial corridors.
