From: Caleb Tennis
Columbus
With the city’s imminent purchase of FairOaks Mall, I’m skeptical as to the logic, rationale and usefulness of the purchase. I’ve spoken to people who both really like the idea, and those who are completely against it. I’m somewhere in the middle.
However, what I don’t understand is the collaboration between the city and the hospital on the property. How is the city benefiting from the hospital’s participation? What motivation does the hospital have in being involved?
After the last city council meeting, we now have a new non-profit entity with another quasi-governmental board. I’ve lost track of how many new governmental boards our Republican mayor and majority council have created in the past three years, but it really doesn’t matter as they’re all being overseen by the same small group of people anyway. Both of the mayoral appointments to the board were Lienhoop campaign contributors. The hospital’s CFO was another campaign contributor. The consultant hired by the city to manage the mall acquisition — you guessed it, campaign contributor.
There’s a lot of development work to be done on the mall, but no answers as to the costs the taxpayer will be expected to foot for buildout and maintenance of the existing building. There are, however, plenty of campaign contributors with development experience waiting for their turn to be involved.
The playbook being used wreaks of the last quasi-government debacle our mayor, then city councilman, was involved in: Columbus Downtown Inc. (CDI). The only difference this time is the hospital decided it needed a piece of the pie. With all of the real estate CRH has been buying the past few years, this "partnership" is an inexpensive way to have another major property in their control.
Who’s going to stop them? It would be bad for business to stand in the way of that juggernaut.
Even though there are four contracted city attorneys, and a hospital attorney, the city even consulted with the same Indianapolis lawyer to setup the corporate framework for the new mall entity as they used for CDI a decade ago. But why wouldn’t they, since that law firm was, you guessed it, a Lienhoop campaign contributor. Of course, the CPA firm formerly worked at by the mayor was also brought in to assist.
A rational approach would have been for the city to buy the property and lease space to the hospital. I don’t see how a joint venture is good for either party. Now we have an eight-member board who all owe each other political favors, a whole lot of campaign contributors who are reaping the rewards and not even a glimmer of light on how much pork barrel spending remains.
This is not a recipe for good business or good government.
