Remediation work continues at Grandview Crossing, the nearly 40-acre former landfill site near the intersection of Dublin Road and Grandview Avenue. Wagenbrenner Development partner Joe Williams recently told Columbus Underground that a range of uses are still on the table for the site – although the increasing interest in urban acreage from big box retailers would definitely be a factor in its development.
“What we’re hearing demand-wise is big box,” Williams said. “There’s just no place for these guys to go, they’re not seeing opportunities in the (suburban) green-fields anymore, and they’ve seen the success of places like Lennox and the Kroger at 7th and High…and with Grandview Yard going completely mixed-use office, there’s a pent-up demand for the Lennox-type users who want to serve the core, and that’s a pretty good location for that.”
Williams added that the site’s relative isolation is also a positive; with railroad tracks behind it and commercial and institutional properties along the other edges, there are few immediate neighbors to be negatively impacted by a large-scale development.
About a third of the site – the portion closest to Grandview Avenue – is in Grandview Heights, while the rest is in Columbus. Williams said that the Grandview portion could have a more urban form and perhaps feature mixed-use elements.
As for the remediation work, the history of the site – it was a construction landfill in the 1960’s and has been an illegal dumping ground for years – presents unique challenges, even for a company with as much experience in brownfield clean-up as Wagenbrenner.
“Similar to what we did on Gowdy Field, we’ll bring in a massive amount of dirt and cap it,” said Williams. “The biggest issues we have (at the Grandview site) are more geotechnical in nature rather than technical in nature,” he added, explaining that the work going on now is mostly about compacting the dirt and any debris buried underground in order to create a stable base of land to build on.
That compaction work is going on now, courtesy of an 18-ton steel weight being dropped repeatedly from a large crane.
“It’s pretty simple, they move it over, drop it, move it over, drop it…it’ll take through the winter, then we’re going to cut in utilities,” he said, adding that the goal is to get the site ready for development by the summer and to ramp up marketing efforts at that time.
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