Photo provided A view of the building at 1350 Arcadia Drive that the city is considering purchasing and retrofitting for a new public works facility.
City officials gave initial approval to rezone property that will be the future home of the city’s Department of Public Works.
Columbus City Council members voted 8-0 to pass the first reading of an ordinance to rezone about 21 acres at 1350 Arcadia Drive from Industrial: Heavy (I3) to Industrial: General (I2).
Ordinances must be passed on two readings to be fully approved. Council Member Jerone Wood, D-District 3, was absent.
The government facility would be a permitted use under I2 zoning but is not under I3, which is why redevelopment is seeking to rezone it.
Director of Public Works Bryan Burton in city meetings over the past few months has discussed how the department has significantly outgrown capacity at the current city facility at 2250 Kreutzer Drive, where they are maxed out on electrical capacity, don’t have enough parking or office space for employees and insufficient storage.
The Columbus Redevelopment Commission approved a purchase and sales agreement with Yinlun TDI, LLC for the former data center-turned city facility on May 20. The agreement was for $2.6 million, plus an additional $25,000 for closing costs. The property had been listed for $2.9 million, according to Director of Redevelopment Heather Pope.
On Aug. 19, the redevelopment commission met again and discussed a schematic design for the facility and the estimated associated costs to make it happen. It was estimated by Force Design that the upgrades to the site would cost an amount not to exceed $6.1 million.
The new facility is twice the size of the public works’ current facility and will include a 15,000 square-foot building addition for maintenance, a 10,000 square-foot covered storage building addition and a nearly 2,000 square-foot addition for a wash building. It’s set to have a maintenance area with 10 service bays, two underground fuel tanks and would be able to house significantly more vehicles.
Columbus City Council members on Sept. 3 backed redevelopment’s expenditure of about $8.7 million to buy the property and renovate the building for the new use.
Although Force Design’s schematic didn’t include a salt barn, city council members indicated they would be open to approving an expenditure for one at a later time.
A pond on the site of the new facility would be turned into a park area and the facility would also feature a future connection to the People Trail along Indianapolis Road to the northern border of the property and to the west.
Although a significant amount of the property is located in 100 or 500-year floodplain, Force Design’s Karen Walker said everything it would need could be built on the parts that aren’t in the floodplain.
The project will be the first time the city has used the buy-operate-transfer (BOT) procurement method. BOT is a public/private partnership style of procurement method where a municipality enters into an agreement with a developer who is responsible for the design, construction and operation of a project. The developer operates the project for a certain time period before the project is transferred back over to a municipality.
City council members approved a resolution so the delivery method could be used for capital projects during their meeting on July 2.
“If this is approved, we would be able to move into the RFP stage of the scenario, which is where we will issue an RFP for a contractor to do the build, operate transfer procurement process and take us through our construction documents as well, and then ultimately pursue the renovation of the site,” Brown told planning commissioners before approval on September 11.
Brown said they anticipate construction to start in spring 2025.
