Brutus_buckeye

Columbus' average annual growth so far this decade is 12,176. That's 30% higher than even during the peak of the annexation years of the 1950s. You mention 8000 units in the pipeline in the next 3 years. A study on the region stated that at least 33,000 new units would be needed by 2030, or about 2,540 per year every year. The 8000 is a slightly higher rate than that, but not by much. Keep in mind that that study had to be updated due to initially underestimating regional population growth, and the 12,176 is based on estimates. Columbus has grown faster than the estimates when the decennial census counts were done in at least the past few decades, so in all likelihood, the estimated unit need is still too low. Furthermore, Columbus has seen MUCH higher residential construction in other years when the population was growing more slowly. For example, single-family home construction starts are still well under what they were prior to the recession, and even apartment construction is under the rate of the apartment boom that occurred in the area in the late 1990s. This has led to record low inventory for multiple years in a row, along with rising housing and rent prices which also continue to hit new record highs. However, the point is even more drastic if those 8000 units are spread across the metro rather than just Columbus or Franklin County alone. How many of those units are actually there? It seems strange for lenders to focus on areas like Delaware County in determining the market of Columbus, though. Franklin County receives the bulk of all new population into the metro area. It grew 4.5x faster than Delaware County in total. It grew more than every county in the metro combined. I would imagine that the markets are very different county to county. As I said, you just seem to be saying that they're being cautious. There is no indication, at least in Franklin County, that new construction is having any trouble being absorbed. The core county is where the 23,300 people moving to the metro every year largely want to be. If lenders are taking a breather, it seems unrelated to actual market conditions. Population growth is only one factor at play here. Columbus had strong growth in 2008 and 2009 but if you remember, there was not much construction during that time. In the current environment, the development market (per the lenders view) is a bit overheated, especially given the rising interest rates and therefore, they are being much more cautious on development deals because the pipeline is full in their opinion and they want to hit the pause button. The same thing is going on in Indy too. Conversely, Cincinnati which is not growing as fast, also did not see the same hyper-supply of development going on so there is more room to lend in that market. Same is true for Cleveland and Detroit. Population growth is only part of the equation and Columbus continued population growth should in no way be considered a bad thing, but essentially, certain market conditions that a lender would like when viewing things at 30,000 feet are not in equilibrium now which is why there is a bit of financing sluggishness.

Moeller tried to do this with their field about 15 years ago and the NIMBY's complained about lights, which would be used about 10 times per year and turned off no later than 10PM. They effectively killed the plan so instead, Moeller turned the field which in the past had been open to the neighbors to use as a community asset into a locked facility that the neighbors no longer were able to enjoy.

It is obviously something they consider I would guess, but from what they have indicated, the biggest focus and cause for pause right now is that there are approximately 8000 units that are in development that are in the 3 year pipeline to be delivered and they want to see the market handle them before committing to more in a rising interest rate environment. The population growth is only one component of the whole thing.

I just don't buy that, sorry. Lenders are by nature overly cautious, and lending has been a cited problem getting projects built for years now around Columbus. And yet Columbus population growth is at record levels and occupancy rates are near record highs. New projects often fill up before buildings open. There is no expectation that demand is going to slow down anytime soon, especially in the urban core. There was a report not that long ago that Columbus will need tens of thousands of new units by 2030, and it's not keeping pace. Ultimately, it may does not matter what you think, it is what the people at Fannie and Freddie and many of the Life Insurance companies that lend for these large projects think. They often are not on the ground in Columbus nor do they really care about it outside of a numbers story, and in 2018 they are saying Columbus is slightly overbuilt. In 2020 the market may say something different. In 2017 Columbus was not overbuilt.

Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland are all seeing a boom in their urban cores. the biggest thing about Columbus is that they have the most units in the pipeline than the other cities. While that is good and exciting, there are more units in development in the region than Columbus population growth supports at this time and it will take time for the market to absorb it. Yes, there may be a push for more downtown units, but units being developed in Delaware county, etc help determine what the market will sustain from a lender point of view. The problem is that building a 20 story tower downtown is a lot more expensive than a 3 story building in Powell or Reynoldsburg or Marysville. While rents will be much higher to justify the development, for such a development to take place, the developer needs to put down a lot more money up front in order to get the deal off the ground. When you are talking about building a $100 million tower, it is rare to find a developer with that much liquid cash to take that risk. The lenders who would lend on such a property see Columbus as overbuilt and needing to take a pause. I know you are excited about Columbus growth but the financing fundamentals that preclude or slow down this type of development has nothing to do with the growth going on, it is mostly the financing community taking a pause to catch its breath before proceeding further. Dallas Ft. Worth and Denver are faster growing markets than Columbus but are going through some hyper-supply issues and development lending is slowing in those cities. It will pick up again soon if things stay strong, but it is all about letting the market absorb what is built before moving forward again.

^not what is being discussed by lenders across the country. Right now Columbus is in hyper supply and there is starting to be some pull back in the lending community toward the market. Not saying it is a bad market, and it is still a very strong market on the whole, but there is some trepidation from some of the larger institutional lenders right now as there is a perception that there is a bit of overbuilding in the Columbus market. I was at a conference the other day with some regional VP's from Fannie and Freddie who were both saying this. So, ultimately, the developer can't justify building because 1) doing so would change the risk profile of the project around making it unpalatable, and 2) the secondary market of buyers for the loans and even apartment operators are reluctant to pay top dollar for the paper anymore.

Minneapolis to St Paul is right across the river. 12.4 miles from city center to city center. Much closer than Cleveland to Akron. The point is not so much the distance between Minneapolis and St. Paul, it was that cities like them, Dallas/Ft Worth, Raleigh Durham, Tampa St. Pete, Washington/Baltimore and even San Fran Oakland to a lesser extent thrive because they create one large metro area and people associate it as one place both to attract federal dollars as well as outside investment from the private sector. Cleveland/Akron and Cincy/Dayton are missing out on that now. Especially Cleve/Akron because like MSP, their counties are contiguous and touch.

Personally, I think it is foolish pride and the fear of lost identity. Yes, Cleveland would get the most benefit but again, people looking for value would look further out and discover the gems in Akron. If you look at Minneapolis/St Paul they are not really much closer than Cleve/Akron If you look at Dallas/Ft Worth - Cleve/Akron are a much closer defined market. However, treating both those markets as one has really helped them with clout nationally and to punch above its weight. I was at a meeting a few months back with a few NY private equity guys and they indicated that the only Midwest markets they were looking at right now outside Chicago was Minneapolis/st Paul and Detroit because they were both top 20 markets. Detroit is essentially a singularly defined market but separate Minneapolis from St. Paul and the region loses a lot of clout.

Absolutely, we can drill down and see value in certain neighborhoods. We know that Hyde Park Near and Madisonville are effectively one in the same. We can determine that an investment property in Shaker Square or Van Aken is going to be more valuable than one off the beaten path in Shaker Heights. The out of town investor will never be able to get that specific in market intelligence. That is why they rely on the blunt instrument of market size. They may miss out on a number of gems, but it protects their downside better (at least in theory)

^ it is in a way, but again, when you are trying to frame an opportunity in market #16 market 29 or market 55 and you have 3 proposals with identical numbers, market 16 is going to get the first look and the most interest, all things being equal. When you are looking at dozens of opportunities in a week, they are not going to take the time to call the leasing manager or do local market diligence to determine that the market is actually bigger than the number. That is why it will naturally attract more capital and investment to the region.

Because there are a lot of institutional investment groups out there, be it multifamily, or venture capital or whatever sector they focus on that are based on the coasts. They invest in opportunities all over the US, but some (if not many) focus on top 20 markets only. If you are not top 20, they are not interested in investing (There are hundreds of smaller shops out there that most people never knew existed). They don't have time to dig deeper and see that Cincinnati and Dayton are essentially one market or that Cleveland and Akron are the same market and only look at whether it meets certain demographic models before investing. These people spend all day in their office on the coasts so they don't give a thought to stepping on the ground to examine if Dayton or Cleveland or Akron are worth an investment for them. All they see is that it does not fit their financial model. Now if you combine Cincy-Dayton and they are one market, they become a top 20 and now meet the investment criteria for many of these companies. That is why this is a big deal.

It is compelling in the fact that larger investors are starting to invest in Ohio. Columbus is hot and so is Cincinnati, at least on the multifamily side. If you read on Bigger Pockets, there are a lot of out of town investors looking at the area. I was at a commercial real estate meeting the other day and they all said it would be a good idea to lobby your congressman to force the issue as soon as possible on the Cincinnati Dayton merger because it will lead to a lot more capital coming in to the region once that happens, especially for the long struggling Dayton market.

Dayton used to lean towards the Browns market until the 90s when the team moved to Baltimore, now Dayton is a very large Bengals market. Part of it was the history of the Bengals not being around and it took a while for the Bengals generation to take root. The second factor was that the TV contracts and TV markets were not as controlled so the Dayton stations could show the Browns game if they choose over the Bengals games at the time (now they have to show the Bengals). Even if there were more Bengal fans there per capita, most of the Dayton market could pick up the Cincinnati stations over their antenna and Cincy residents could pick up the Dayton channels so it gave people in the market another option for viewing.

^ it would be interesting to see the stats of other cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Charlotte, Philly, NYC, Boston compare too. I don't know if this provides much insight into growth of cities (as some other older cities are growing) or just the nature of housing stock and when they initially developed.

This is all about how he does not like Cranley.

And Dayton's growth is South and Eastward. Either it is near the Air Force Base or the growth is moving down to Springboro and Franklin. the growth around Austin Landing is amazing and also pouring over into Springboro. My sister in law lives in Springboro and her and her husband commute to Dayton so they are part of this statistic too.

I have lived in Cleve Heights, I have lived in Columbus and Dayton at points too and obviously, I live in Cincy. Citywise, Cleveland has just a bigger feel than the other cities. It feels very urban when you are in the city. Akron feels like a part of Cleveland especially if you live on the East side of Cleveland. If you live in Westlake or Avon or Lakewood, Akron is like another world away. When I was living in Cleveland though, a drive to Akron or Cuyahoga Falls was just as easy as a drive downtown to Cleveland. In that area, it felt that there were just a lot more people around and it had a large city feel to it. Cincy had a lot of urban characteristics and a large city feel to it but not quite to the same level of Cleveland. In Cincy, things seemed more condensed and closer together from an urban standpoint but just a bit smaller. Cincy had a lot more distinct neighborhoods with their own unique character than what I found in Cleveland. Cincinnati felt like more of a bunch of smaller neighborhoods coming together to make the whole, but the character was very unique. It definitely felt like a pretty large urban city, but a little smaller than what Cleveland felt. Columbus was always a new city. There was not the character of Cincy or Columbus and I felt that it had a lot of just cheap sprawl. It never felt very urban to me and it just seemed like the area just spread out around the edges. You see this with Marysville pretty much becoming a suburb of Columbus now whereas 30 years ago it was the cornfields. Even though it has a comparable number of people to Cincy or Cleve it just feels distinctly smaller than the other two cities because it is so much more spread out.

With all these schools involved is this really an indictment of the schools or the NCAA and the game itself. I am not sure if sanctions here from the NCAA is really warranted because it goes beyond the individual schools and goes more to the entire integrity of the game itself.

My comments were not meant to be a pissing match between Cleve, Cincy and Cbus. I have lived in Cleveland and think it is a great city. Outside of the weather, I loved Cleveland. My point though is that given that all cities are roughly the same size, each should support a top level research school. Cleveland has one in Case, which is probably better than both OSU and UC in prestige. (For the record, nobody cares about Oberlin, it is a cute little school but we are talking about research schools which Oberlin is not, nor does it have the endowment, prestige or economic might of Case, OSU or UC. Oberlin is really not relevant to the conversation). Given that Cle, Cincy and Columbus are roughly the same size, there is no need to elevate CSU to a high level research school since Case is already in the market. Yes it is private, but so what. The point of the Carnegie level Research Schools is not about providing education to students (that is secondary now) it is about doing high level prestigious research and generating grants for the research and also recruiting and attracting high level faculty whose jobs it is to make these discoveries and provide an economic driver for the community. Case accomplishes this task already quite well. CSU is not needed to do this, that is Case's responsibility. If you want to compare CSU to another school, it is like Northern Kentucky University is to Cincinnati. I do not think there is an applicable comparison in Columbus. Yes CSU has a lot more students than Case, high level college education has never been about the students for a long time. It is solely about the Research Dollars and in that area, Case is king

I think it is hard to have 175k in overtime for the year without having inappropriate behavior going on. I don't know for certain of course but do the math, there are only so many hours in a year where he could possibly be "on the clock" assuming a reasonable amount of "sleep" which he apparently did not get on the mayor's detail, it seems like her time in the mayors chair is limited.

Why would it be a waste of money? By your analogy, shouldn't CSU be akin to Pitt then? No, UC is essentially akin to Pitt. If you look at the PA system, Penn State and Pitt are a separate system than the other state schools. They have different unions, different requirements for admission and different fee schedules for in state students. They are also the 2 largest and bring in most research dollars. CSU does not come close to UC of OSU here. It would be one thing to elevate it into a top research school so each of the big 3 cities have one but there is no need in this case since Case serves that role more than effectively in Cleveland

CSU is a nice city school and serves a purpose but not quite the level of UC or OSU. It is not a top research school and never will be. It was never intended to serve that purpose. CSU is akin to Wright State or Akron. It has a law school but no med school and the law school is meh at best. CSU does not need to be the research school the level of Ohio State or UC and it would be a waste of state dollars to try and turn it in to such. Cleveland has Case, and Case is akin to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

^ Ohio's public schools are very different in nature that it is hard. Ohio would fit much more like the PA system. There you have Penn State and Pitt as the flagship schools and the liberal arts schools like Slippery Rock and Shippensburg. THis parallels Ohio quite well. You have OSU and CIncy as the big state research schools. You have BGSU, MIami, OU, Kent State, YSU and Cleve State as the non-research more liberal arts colleges (when I say non-research I mean a bit lower than UC and OSU) The question is what to do with the schools in the middle like Akron, Toledo, and Wright State which are more hybrid type schools that do more research than OU/BGSU etc but not quite the same level as OSU and Cincy.

^ the thing about Vegas which will be the challenge is not the population but the fact that outside of the gaming companies there are not many other large corporate sponsorship interests that would be based in Vegas. THis is the same issue San Antonio has faced in efforts to attract an NFL or other major league team.

Sad - For a neighborhood that is begging for investment, when an opportunity comes to help it revitalize, the residents will always fight it. You have people like Josh Spring who are too stupid for their own good