Several strategic city planning objectives mapped out early in 2012 by Columbus City Planner Christina Berry and city leadership have been met while other goals set at the time continue to be addressed.
A few of the goals, such as cleanliness of neighborhoods and creating more crime prevention programs, didn’t fall specifically under the planning department but had an indirect effect on the overall goal of making the city more attractive to people interested in moving to or locating a business in the city.
There were several, however, that Berry was tasked to address. One of those was to target blighted areas that could be redeveloped. This was accomplished with the establishment of an urban renewal area, a collection of more than 800 blighted and abandoned commercial parcels along Fifth Street, between Second Street and Sixth Street, between 12th Street and 19th Street, North Seventh Avenue, The Island and the Warehouse District.
Another objective was to create a redevelopment authority that would oversee the newly organized area and have the power to offer incentives to potential developers to rehabilitate a parcel that they would otherwise not have available. This goal was met when the Columbus Redevelopment Authority was established this summer and five members were named to the board in August. The board was appropriated $50,000 in start-up funding that was taken from the city planning budget.
At its most recent meeting, the council approved a request from Berry to expand the city’s Central Business District, which includes much of downtown, to include the Urban Renewal District. Berry said this offers incentives such as up-to seven-year ad valorem tax exemptions as permitted by state code to developers who were to repurpose a property in the Urban Renewal District, whereas only property owners in the Central Business District previously had that incentive available.
“We wanted to make sure the urban renewal district was in that central business district as an incentive to attract a developer to do some type of improvement,” Berry said.
Other objectives set during that 2012 session, such as creating an overlay district and identifying an area where the city could construct affordable housing, are still in the works. The overlay district, which would have been a long-range plan to improve aesthetics and navigation on Highway 45 North in the city that received input from area merchants, did not get enough traction to move forward, Berry said.
As tweaks are made to that plan to make it more presentable in the future, the goal of identifying property where creating more affordable housing would be achievable is one that can also be addressed by the new redevelopment authority.
“We’ve looked at this and studied areas on the north side and south side of the city where we could assemble property for housing,” Berry said. “That’s a project we’ve looked at. That’s still something that could come out of any project the redevelopment authority is working on.”
There were also some goals, like establishing a historic district near Railroad Street and the north side of town. Both of those either didn’t materialize or were met with mixed feelings from stakeholders.
“We started trying to see if that was something the community wanted and we had mixed feelings from it,” Berry said. “Some of the people wanted it and some didn’t.”
Since the redevelopment authority began holding meetings in September, the new body is vetting the best possible projects in the Urban Renewal District and determining financing options for them.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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