Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said Thursday that the new sports park he has promised as a public benefit for the plan to build a new downtown football stadium for the Columbus Crew will be moved from the former Mapfre stadium site to land owned by the city on the north-east side.
The sports park will be built in Kilbourne Run, a land near Westerville owned by the city and already home to several public outdoor football fields. There, upgraded playing fields with natural and synthetic grass pitches, “mini-pitches” and a central championship pitch with spectator stands, a dressing room and lights will be built on the 69-acre tract, Ginther announced at a press conference. .
Like the previous project announced in 2018 to be built adjacent to the former Mapfre stadium, the new park will have co-branding with the crew, Ginther said.
Three and a half years ago, the Mapfre sports park was announced almost as if it were a done deal. It was to cost over $ 12 million and sit south of the old stadium on a property owned by the Ohio Expositions Commission, which controls the Ohio Expo Center and the State Fair. It would include outdoor playgrounds and an indoor recreation center.
“It’s not just about saving a football team,” Alex Fischer, who then headed the Columbus Partnership, a group representing the largest companies and organizations in Columbus, told the announcement. “… It is extraordinarily exciting to talk about putting citizens first.
“Folks, we are proving that the impossible is possible.”
Ginther said the sports park was, for him, the most important part of the deal to build a new taxpayer-subsidized Downtown stadium for the Crew. It was so crucial that it even held the announcement the day before taxpayers found out what the crew would receive from the city.
“By all accounts, the public-private partnership to rescue the crew was a tremendous success,” Ginther said Thursday, continuing to list the city’s contribution to the project at $ 50 million despite The Dispatch documenting that the price is skyrocketed beyond that amount long ago.
While the team received everything that had been announced by Ginther in December 2018, the publicly promised new sports park – which was to be nearing completion by now – never opened its doors.
“The time has come for us to make sure that the community benefit we have promised is realized by our residents in neighborhoods across our city,” Ginther said explaining the decision to move the sports park to his new site.
Ginther said he still harbored hope that long-stalled negotiations with the commission that controls the state’s historic fairgrounds would somehow be ripped from its 43-month deadlock.
The city has the funds and is ready to build if the Ohio Expositions Commission accepts a lease, the mayor said.
Asked by The Dispatch if he should promise the city’s residents a new facility on land the city didn’t yet control, Ginther replied that he did so with the support of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.
“We made that announcement based on that commitment,” Ginther said. “… The governor has made a commitment and I take it at his word.”
After negotiations quickly stalled, DeWine publicly stated in the summer of 2019 that the state would host the city park, but that support has not yet materialized into action from Expo’s independent council, including nine of the 14. members are appointed by the governor at six years.
“The talks are underway,” said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for DeWine, who on Thursday had no estimate on when the multi-year negotiations could end. Any deal would be in line with “Expo 2050,” an ongoing examination of the state’s fairground’s future, he said.
Such an initiative will develop a master plan and long-term vision for the fairgrounds that is expected to be ready by the end of the year and could provide guidance for future sports park negotiations, Expo Center spokeswoman Alicia Shoults said in a written statement.
“We are delighted that the City of Columbus will continue to invest in community improvement with sports and recreation after today’s announcement,” said Shoults.
Although neither the city nor the state agreed to discuss what is holding back a deal, in 2021 The Dispatch used the Ohio Public Records Act to review the documents involved in the negotiations, which revealed:
While Ginther was busy announcing the new sports park in 2018, the Ohio Expositions Commission – which has been the custodian of the grounds that has been part of the State Fairgrounds since 1886 – hadn’t even been briefed on the proposal, let alone agree on anything.
Virgil Strickler, general manager of the Ohio Expo Center and State Fair, eventually announced his opposition to the project, saying the parking lot he would give up was too critical to downtown and fairground operations. It’s something he said he would notify the city and its supporters if they asked before making their announcement.
City Council President Shannon Hardin said at the 2018 sports park announcement that she had only one request from Ginther in exchange for his support for the Crew Stadium project: “that we have a clear benefit to the community.”
“When we started talking about reusing this facility (Mapfre) for this neighborhood that has felt left behind so many times, I said that it is, this is leadership,” Hardin said, adding that a sports park for Linden “meets those goals”.
Late Thursday, The Dispatch asked Hardin’s office if the new project still fulfills its goal of clear community benefit as the city has owned the Northeast Side site since 2001 and could have built a sports park there without paying. a new Downtown stadium.
Council spokesperson Nya Hairston said Hardin could not be contacted immediately to respond.
