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    Columbus Sprawl Slows Down and Gets Smarter

    Two weeks ago, The Dispatch ran a story about the annexation and growth of the City of Columbus. The article was fairly straightforward with it’s message of advocating smart growth policies within our existing city boundaries, and abandoning the aggressive outward annexation that was pursued during the latter half of the 20th century.

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    What the article failed to really highlight is the current policies in place that are already being used to move the city in this direction, as annexation has already greatly slowed over the past decade. We recently sat down with Greg Davies, the Deputy Chief of Staff for the City of Columbus to discuss the current growth policies and strategies.

    Walker Evans: I heard that you thought that the Dispatch article didn’t paint a complete picture of the current growth policies. I guess to start, can you explain your thoughts on that?

    Greg Davies: There’s two things that we were troubled by with that article. The first being that there was not a lot of reference to what we did in 2004 through 2008 when development was busy. At that time, MORPC had just announced projections that hundreds of thousands of people were coming to Central Ohio over the next 20 to 25 years. The housing market had started exploding too, but we all started to question our growth. For the past 50 years our aggressive annexation policy served the city very well. If you look at Cleveland or Cincinnati or other cities that got landlocked in by their suburbs, their tax base died, and a lot of their jobs left. Thanks to annexation, Columbus continued to be able to strategically grow during that time. That was Sensenbrenner’s policy and it worked very well. The problem then later developed because we grew so far out that the cost of sending a police officer or fire fighter or building new facilities became too high. The housing that was being built was not generating enough money to pay for these services. There weren’t as many new jobs coming in… it was all single-family housing developments.

    Back around 2003, Mayor Coleman decided that our annexation couldn’t continue the same way, and his whole focus has been on the center city. The King Lincoln District, the Columbus Coated Fabrics site, and many other projects that focus on the inner city. So, the Mayor said that with these newer projects on the outskirts, developers are going to pay for a portion of the infrastructure, and the people that move in are going to pay a portion of it too. We also want to create more jobs. When we’re annexing land where a developer wants to build 1000 homes, we’re saying that instead we want them to build 500 homes, and some office space. So those kinds of discussions have been taking place ever since 2003.

    One of the first tests was the Hayden Run Corridor, between Dublin and Hilliard, which was annexed as Columbus. So as this whole new growth policy was getting established, the pressures here were immediate, so they figured this out first. M/I Homes, Dominion Homes and Lifestyle Communities were the three developers here, and they collectively wrote a check for $8 million up front to pay for roadwork and and things like that. We also asked for an additional $1700 for every home that was built, so if you built a home or bought a home there, you were paying an additional $1700 that went straight to the city. Then we created a TIF so that the property tax money was getting spun off to pay and maintain the infrastructure. In the Northwest corner of the city we’re already on our second or third road now that is being completely redone using strictly TIF dollars, and nothing out of our general fund dollars. It’s strictly being paid for by the people that live in that area. We also set up a community authority, which you would pay an extra 4 mills into if you live in that area, and then we use that money to buy park land or fire station land or other types of things like that.

    So all of that is the “Pay as We Grow” element of the growth strategy.

    Then we also have the “Jobs Creation” strategy. If you look at the northeast corner of the city… I don’t know if you’re familiar with the 161 & Hamilton Road area… we worked real hard with Casto and other developers up there. We had a year and a half conversation with them about how we needed more office space. It was an ongoing battle. But the bottom line is that we finally zoned it, but we zoned it for office and good jobs and not all retail, though there is some there.

    The “Shared Facilities” is the third part of this strategy, which is, if you’re familiar with Weinland Park, we built that policing station and school and park so we worked with CPS and OSU and our thought is… hey, we’re all interested in the same thing, let’s all pool our money and build facilities that help all of us.

    The fourth and final part of the strategy is the “Regional Growth and Intergovernmental Cooperation” portion. A good example of that would be how we share maintenance costs now with Metro Parks, and there’s been talk about working with SWACO about getting a bigger pot of area for trash pickup and recycling. Of course, these are long term conversations, but the thought there is to have a more regional approach to our development decisions. That has worked in the Northwest for Hilliard and Dublin too, because they paid for part of those roads that were redone, because obviously their residents are traveling through Columbus too.

    So anyway, our frustration with the Dispatch story is that there really wasn’t any recognition of any of this. It seemed instead to convey that now that we’re through this economic downturn, the city going to go back to what it was doing prior to 2003. We are going to go back to what we were doing, but of course I’m referring to everything we’ve done since 2003.

    WE: Yeah, the article didn’t really mention any of the denser development Downtown that has occurred in the past few years.

    Exactly. It felt like that implication was that the Mayor doesn’t care about the core of the city. But when we campaigned for the income tax, we got attacked left and right for the Lincoln Theatre, Downtown Condos and The Streetcar. The Mayor has gotten more people living Downtown than any mayor before him. Had the housing market not completely tanked, I think you’d see even more people living Downtown. We’ve still got a lot going on in various stages like the Riversouth Annex and the South Side development at the former Techneglas site. I can give you a lot of examples of where the core city has been the recipient of the Mayor’s vision. He truly believes that everything else dies with out the core of the city.

    WE: Has there ever been any thought of setting up an Urban Growth Boundary or Green Belt to hem in suburban sprawl?

    GD: Certainly within Downtown we already build densely like that, and there’s codes and zoning for it, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation about overhauling our zoning code specifically for either of those concepts. Around six years ago we did try bringing everyone all together to try to work with the single family builders on building green and incentivizing for those types of things. Not quite as progressive as those concepts you mentioned, but we’re certainly open to moving in those directions.

    Oh, something else worth mention would be the Big Darby. There was tremendous pressure to develop that area. Columbus is actually less than 10% of that area, but somehow the City of Columbus somehow became responsible for the Darby. If you ever delve deeply into that process, there are some really innovative green policies and tons of work done on that to make sure that if that does get developed, it gets developed right. We’re talking about creating a town center, and leaving huge acreage untouched. We would have people who are living there pay to buy that land and give it to the city or a township to make sure it stays green, because the Big Darby is so unique in its environmental habitat. I think that when all said and done, the Darby will be a tremendous success when it’s developed… and it already is a success because it’s not developed. Had somebody not stood up and stopped that, it would have been developed and probably not in the best way.

    WE: Has the city considered incentives for LEED-ND development?

    GD: If you’re familiar with Greenview Estates, which is on the northeast side of the city, we actually built an entire subdivision there that is LEED certified. The argument with builders is that it costs more to build green, so we discounted that land and put in all the infrastructure for it. Our stance is that it might cost a little more upfront, but over the long term you end up saving money. That project was finished 3 or 4 years ago… and we haven’t been doing more projects like it because we’ve been broke. A lot of these types of development polices we can’t implement because we don’t have the money. There’s a lot of things we’d like to do, and everything we do now is looked at through a green lens. Building density is a little trickier though, and I think some landlocked cities do it because they have no choice. With a city like Columbus where there is still so much undeveloped area, it’s kind of hard to force a developer to build densely.

    WE: So it sounds like these types of annexations and development are being done on more of a case-by-case basis?

    GD: Absolutely. I mean… I’m not saying that the City of Columbus is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the Mayor deserves a lot of credit for focusing on the core neighborhoods and recognizing that if we’re going to keep growing, somebody’s got to pay for that, and that’s got to be the people that use it. As you know, every big city has its problems, and I like to think that Columbus has fewer than most big cities.

    WE: Well, thanks for taking the time to share all of this information with us, Greg.

    GD: No problem. We know that Columbus Underground readers have an interest in urban policy, and we just wanted to get our full story out there about what we’ve been doing so people can take it for what it’s worth.

    WE: Thanks, talk to you again soon.

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    Walker Evans
    Walker Evanshttps://columbusunderground.com
    Walker Evans is the co-founder of Columbus Underground, along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.
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