From: Kristen Brown
Columbus
When the failed FairOaks mall went up for sale, it represented an opportunity for one of CRH’s major competitors like St. Francis to get a large foothold in our community.
Of course CRH wants the property off the market, but only has use for 25 percent of the mostly vacant 400,000-square-foot mall.
So city officials bridged the gap, committing over $4 million for 75 percent of the mall space even though they cannot identify any significant uses for it besides offices for seven to eight parks employees.
Officials have identified one use of the land surrounding the mall — an indoor sports complex. It requires new construction of a 150,000 square foot air dome.
The city already owns plenty of developable land for this purpose at the airport. It would complement the soccer fields and BCSC’s planned $5 million outdoor soccer complex there.
If the city hadn’t stepped in with tax dollars, the free market would work. At the right price, a business, developer or hospital would repurpose the mall or redevelop it.
Instead, city government and our tax dollars are pawns in what appears to be CRH’s quest to lock out competitors and to gain total monopoly control of our health care.
By CRH I don’t mean its outstanding doctors, nurses and other care givers, I mean CRH’s leadership — the board appointed by the county commissioners and CEO Jim Bickel.
CRH is a county-owned hospital but its mission is to make money – lots of it.
In the last public reporting, Bickel was the 16th highest paid public employee in the state, making nearly $650,000 in 2013. No other county-owned hospital CEO in the state made the list which is topped by IU and Purdue ball coaches.
On the other hand, the city’s parks department loses lots of money at today’s four indoor recreation facilities: The Commons, Hamilton, FFY and Donner, which total 171,000 square feet.
These facilities, even including revenues, collectively cost the taxpayers several million dollars a year in operational losses, construction debt payments, and ongoing maintenance.
Adding the mall’s and air dome’s 550,000 square feet quadruples the parks’ indoor recreational facilities to 721,000 square feet.
The burning question our elected officials can’t answer is how much will it cost us, the taxpayers.
Our financial burden will undoubtedly be massive.
The jobs any sports tourism creates are more of the already plentiful, low-wage jobs that don’t pay enough for basic survival in Columbus.
What we need for economic growth isn’t more low-wage jobs. We desperately need more high-quality affordable housing.
The FairOaks site is ideal for this purpose.
At this point, I hope city officials consider — with much overdue public input – alternative plans, including:
- Partnering with private developers of affordable housing to redevelop the FairOaks site as the city did with the Golden Foundry site a few years ago
- Locating the air dome at the airport
- Encouraging CRH to expand at the same airport location or one of the multimillion dollar vacant properties it already owns
