Developer Kyle Katz has proposed a four-story, 152-unit mixed-use development for the Olympic Swim Club site at 3450 Indianola Avenue in Clintonville. He is pursuing the project with his wife, April Zimmerman Katz, who is the owner of the property and whose grandparents bought the pool in 1938, a year after it was built.
Zimmerman Katz said that her grandfather, who passed away in 2012, had been subsidizing the operation of the pool for years. Her cousin, Newt Jones, took over the management of the pool in 2001; since that time membership has halved while expenses have increased by 200 percent.
“The idea with this project is to keep the site in the family for another five generations, and to build something that would honor our family’s commitment, as well as honor the community’s vision,” said Zimmerman Katz. “We think we’ve created something very beautiful, something that provides things that are important to the community, like more housing options, restaurants, and increased walkability.”
Plans for the development, which have been submitted to the city and will be presented to the zoning and variance committee of the Clintonville Area Commission in September, call for three stories of apartments above street-level storefronts.
Katz said that half of the first floor will be dedicated to restaurant space, while the other half will likely hold retail or professional offices.
“Our ambition for the restaurant space is to find an indigenous, eclectic tenant that would reflect the energy of Clintonville,” he said.
An interior courtyard would sit on top of a 142-space parking structure in the back of the property – Katz said that with additional surface parking and by sharing spaces with Olympic Indoor Tennis (which sits directly behind the pool and is not closing), they hope to provide a total of 352 spaces, “more parking than any other project proposed in Clintonville.”
A one-story building that currently houses Budget Carpet and Flooring would be torn down to make way for the proposed development, which is being called The Olympic.
Katz said that they have taken a very deliberative approach to the project, which has already attracted a high level of interest from area residents, many of whom are unhappy with the pool’s closing. They started by meeting with the city and with some Clintonville Area Commissioners to get a sense of what would work best for the neighborhood.
He said they looked at other urban infill projects, citing specifically The Lane in Upper Arlington as a project that provides housing for empty nesters who may want to downsize without leaving their neighborhood.
“That can be a great thing,” he said, “It can mean turnover of the inventory of housing in the neighborhood, allowing new families move in.”
Two recently-purchased properties across Indianola from the pool are not currently part of the development plans – a small office building has been fixed up for use by Zimmerman Katz (who manages several apartment communities with her father), and a home on the corner of Dunnedin Road is also being renovated and will likely be rented out.
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More information can be found online at www.livetheolympic.com.
Renderings via m+a architects.