17thState

It would be if the city owned the Merchant Building like it owns the Hilton. If the city has a way to profit from this "investment" I could get on board, but this just a handout to private developer for a privately owned building. I could wrong here, but think most if not all of the property taxes will be abated, and payroll taxes for the office portion will likely just be swaps from other locations in the city. I'd have a lot less issue issue with this if the city was treated like any other investor and got an ownership stake. If we wanted a bigger North Market we all could enjoy there are cheaper options for that and agree with @DTCL11, until Columbus starts printing it's own money funds are limited and you can't have everything. So you have to choose.

Agreed, I think for the most part when Easton isn't building Big Box stores on out parcels they do a good job of building mixed use, it's just the mix is only ever retail and office.

The CBF article is very confusingly written. I think this is the synopsis: CCV bought the Dispatch building at 62 East Broad for $1.1M (Dispatch had originally listed the building at $2.15M last March). CCV currently owns the building next door at 60 East Broad and intends to list it for sale.

Well they spent $54M on the merchant building so can't have everything....

Had to Google this and now my search history is forever tainted

Maybe it's the angle, but is that just an unsupported 3 story cinder block wall? I think I'd be a little nervous if I lived in the house next door.

$54M from the city and $39M from the county that's 20% of the project cost.... and this received a TMUD! If the economics were this upside down not sure it should have happened. Probably an unpopular opinion. I'm sure we could have spent half that and gotten a heck of an expanded North Market, not sure we need to be funding a hotel, market rate apartments, and office space that no one will want. I know cities waste money on all kinds things, but 🙄

It's a shame they sliced down those birch trees in front of the restrooms.

Brett Gaj,Greyhound's district manager, seems like a real piece of work, my two favorite quotes "the city's demands for safety and other improvements made the Downtown terminal "extremely costly to operate. And we really didn't want to raise costs for customers," Gaj said." and later in the article. "We take the brunt of the criticism because we're a big national corporation and our name's on the building." Crazy the city made such outrageous demands and yeah maybe Greyhound should take the criticism because they're a private company running a private business and I don't know who else you'd even blame? Maybe the customers, but again it's the company who's targeting those customers and they should understand what security requirements are needed and act appropriately.

This.

Rendering for the project, I imagine everyone will be blown away by the hugely discernable changes they plan to make (thanks to Columbus Business First for this important mind altering rendering)

I just think when you can order deodorant at 9pm and have it on sitting on your doorstep in time for your morning shower at a price that's comparable to any big box grocer it's hard to support a bunch of small corner bodegas. I mean Amazon is the second largest employer in the US, so if you want retail it's going to be a bar or a restaurant.

Wowza that's not great. Such a bummer, I really thought the rest of the trolley district was done well.

That would make them more all season, bring your swimsuit in the summer and your s'mores in the winter.

I haven't heard they've been having financing issues? The first phase seems to have been pretty successful. Are the parking lots replacing planned underground parking? I don't remember much about this proposal.

Wowza, equating North High through Clintonville to Morse Road. One is 50ft wide with a line of trees and then sidewalks and then low rise buildings transitioning to dense neighborhoods. The other is a 100ft divided highway bounded by a small grassy median then huge expanses of parking lots in front of aging big box stores and strip malls. But sure, equally unwalkable in your opinion, noted.

@NW24HXThank you for the link. Glad the commission had alot of same pushback we did. Also can't believe they're exploring making 6th and chapel one-way to "improve flow". Not great. Lastly, I didn't realize you had to be sworn in for these things. Can we go after all the developers who's buildings deviated from approved plans or those who promised to build something within a certain timeline, but never did for perjury?

If they were properly planning for the future they would build up, not just 3 stories of bleh. As you mentioned so frequently they are land locked and they should be maximizing that resource rather than squandering it and vaguely promising that if the city vacates RoWs that somehow will lead to a better outcome in the future. If Nationwide, OSU, and Riverside can all find it economical to build up, when they don't really even have to (because they have plenty of land) , I don't understand why Grant can't. This feels to me like they felt they had to do something so they pulled out the blueprints for some suburban outpatient center and we'e like let's use these because it works and it's the minimum viable option. I get dollars aren't free (especially these days), but this plan sucks and I think we all know it. It sounds like from the comments at the meeting they know it too.

Industrial huh? Well at least filling the site with warehouses won't take that long.

Also, why is it 2 stories tall? Are they hosting Monster Jam in there or something? They should at a minimum paint it black so it looks less like a closed pawn shop.

This cracks me up. Look a pot hole! And the lawn looks bad over here! We have to tear it down!

Wowza, that's an interesting take, also hard to believe a kid had such a negative opinion of a neon sign. But definitely put me in the pro sign camp. To me it's a cool local thing, even if the Dispatch ceased to exist I'd say the city should maintain it. It's basically public art at this point. I'd like to think any attempt to take that sign down would cause an uproar, my guess is people love it. I also would have guessed it was from the 1920's, but apparently it's was only put up in 1958. *The more you know...

Glad I wasn't the only one thinking it. That Linwood build is a monstrosity. The house in the picture below it is also a little odd. I think it's windows on the second floor.

For single family homes these are impressively dense. It's also kind of an odd layout, when they are this tight you get these odd decisions when they don't build on a grid. Like why does the alley connect to Hudson Crossing and not continue to Bobcat? I also think everything between Pullman and Bobcat is odd. It's like the couldn't decide which street to make the houses face since they didn't have room for 2 rows so decided neither and wound up with these units facing each other with these odd parking courtyards for the garages. It's bizarre they should have made Pullman the front and Bobcat the back. That way you'd have a nice residential street that everything faces and Bobcat which abuts a parking lot could be the garage access.

Won't anyone think of the children!!! Not all fertilizer facilities are ticking time bombs. Ammonium nitrate is the dangerous/potentially explosive form of fertilizer, it is not the only type of fertilizer. There are other sources of nitrogen, in the NPK (nitrogen-potassium-phosphorus) combo that constitutes most fertilizers. I did the bare minimum and pulled up their website. Looks like they make consumer grade tree/shrub spikes and organic mixes. Anything organic is probably like blood/feather meal or manure and again there are other forms of synthetic nitrogen. Looks like they probably take various NPK and micronutrients, compress it into a spike, and package it. I wouldn't want it to next to my house, but I wouldn't want to live next to any factory. But this area seems pretty industrial, I'd be more worried about the biodiesel facility that's already next door.