Columbus is pretty much the consensus "best city" in the Midwest by
most metrics. Unlike St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, it's actually doing pretty well economically.
Indy is probably the next best, but it's nowhere near Columbus. Actually, Minneapolis is good too.
However, that's mostly for the middle class. I'm guessing extremely wealthy people would still prefer Chicago, or Nashville in the near-south. I think if Columbus actually won something, they wouldn't have as many problems with player retention and attendance.
It'll be interesting to see if Columbus ends up building a Finnish sub-culture within their team. Kind of like the Russians on Washington, or more recently, the Swedes on Calgary.