Mike Wolanin | The Republic Columbus Plan Commission President Michael Kinder, from left, City-County Planning Director Jeff Bergman and Columbus Plan Commission member Dennis Baute listen to a presentation during the Columbus Plan Commission meeting at Columbus City Hall in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023.
A concept plan outlining a potential future for nearly 700 acres of westside property owned by Columbus Regional Hospital is one step closer to approval.
The Columbus Plan Commission voted Wednesday to give a favorable recommendation to the Columbus City Council regarding the adoption of the City View District Plan as an element of the city’s Comprehensive Plan, which provides guidance for future land use and development in the community.
The council will make the final determination on the plan’s adoption. City/county planning director Jeff Bergman said that the matter will likely go before the council on Sept. 5.
The commission’s vote was 6-1, with member Dennis Baute voting against the motion. He said that while he is not necessarily against the plan, he would like to hear more public input on the concept and doesn’t feel that it’s ready for adoption, given questions around certain matters such as flood hazards.
“We’re not ready, not near, I don’t think,” Baute said.
Commission members Zack Ellison and Julie Abedian recused themselves from the discussion and vote due to their respective connections with CRH. Ellison is a member of the hospital’s board of trustees, and Abedian is CRH’s executive vice president and chief community impact officer.
The City View District Plan addresses the site also known as the Garden City Farms property, which stretches east-to-west from Interstate 65 almost to State Road 11/Jonesville Road, and is south of the westside Walmart and north of the Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds. The approximately 690-acre site is owned by CRH.
“The City View District planning process has been a collaboration between Columbus Regional Health (CRH) and the City of Columbus, aided by consultant Design Workshop,” city officials said. “The process seeks to establish a vision for the long-term future development of the property. The resulting plan is intended to serve as both a master plan to guide CRH decision making as property owner and a component of the City of Columbus Comprehensive Plan.”
In addition to an approximately 100-acre CRH campus, the proposal includes a variety of residential neighborhoods, commercial centers and a research and development campus. These areas would be connected to each other and nature via “open spaces, green corridors, and amenities that extend throughout the property,” officials said.
CRH President and CEO Jim Bickel has emphasized that the plan is meant to create a long-term vision for the site and said that CRH doesn’t have an “imminent plan” for its facility needs at this time.
“Our discussion tonight is at the very, very start of what would be a very long process with elements, with a number of other steps remaining,” Bergman said, in regards to the development of the property.
These steps include annexation, connection to city utilities, rezoning, subdivision and analysis of flooding risk.
Certain areas of the site are located in flood hazard areas based on maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which prompted questions from Baute, as well as a couple of individuals who spoke during the time for public comment.
Bergman said that there are similarities and differences when it comes to the hospital’s current campus and the westside site.
“Both are to some degree within floodplain but also clearly very floodplain-adjacent,” he said. “A couple differences; 17th Street is along Haw Creek, which is smaller stream, very prone to flash flooding. … The best available information on notice of flood severity, based on our stream gauges, gives us about four hours’ worth of warning to what would happen at the 17th Street site during a flood event.”
On the other hand, the City View District is site is south of the Driftwood River and east of the East Fork White River. Bergman said these bodies of water are not as subject to flash flooding, and flood warnings could be given two to three days in advance at this location with “an understanding of severity.”
He added that there has been a change in regulations since CRH’s current campus was built at 17th Street. CRH will need to ensure that its new site is flood-free and that access to the site is flood-free in the event of a 500-year flood event, so that evacuation can safely occur. State Road 46 as an access road to the property will probably not meet this standard, Bergman said.
Lenart noted that the concept plan for the City View District shows 100-year floodplain around the area where the hospital facility might be located. However, he said that there are more constraints on their current 17th Street campus due to the majority of the land being within a floodway.
“We believe that at least for the City View District, the FEMA maps there are fairly old,” he said. “I think we have to take a contemporary understanding of that area, and I think there may be able to have some modifications to the plans as we currently know them. Maybe more land is actually not in the current floodway or floodplains as there (is) currently identified. We won’t know that until we do another study. We hope to do that study soon, because that would help inform this particular comprehensive plan even further.”
Bergman said that if the updated study shows that the concept plan for the City View District is no longer feasible, the hospital and city would likely need to revisit the plan.
“Potentially, new floodplain mapping could be very consequential either way, really,” he said. “You could see more land open that has greater development potential, or the opposite.”
