Mike Wolanin | The Republic An exterior view of NexusPark in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025.
City officials say NexusPark has experienced “a few growing pains” as officials have worked to ramp up operations at the community health, wellness and recreation center but expressed confidence in the facility’s long-term success, despite some retailers’ frustrations over foot traffic.
NexusPark — a joint venture between the city of Columbus and Columbus Regional Health aimed at converting the former FairOaks Mall into a hub for health, wellness and recreation — saw many of its core facilities open in 2024, including offices for CRH and the city’s parks department, along with the 150,000-square-foot Circle K Fieldhouse.
Last month, city officials recently celebrated the opening of the Midtown Green space at the front of the property, capping a seven-year process that began when the city, CRH and the Heritage Fund began the process of purchasing the nearly vacant mall for $5.9 million in 2018.
City officials have acknowledged that their efforts to ramp up the facility’s operations is an “ongoing process” they have expected to take three to five years but say foot traffic has been trending in the right direction and are optimistic that it “will continue to grow” and that the that the fieldhouse — which will receive a $200,000 subsidy from the city next year — will be fully sustainable within “a year or two.”
City officials said NexusPark has seen a 77% in the number of people visiting NexusPark over the past year and a 126% increase over the past two years, citing aggregated and anonymized location data from mobile devices compiled by Placer.AI.
NexusPark received 1.3 million visits from Aug. 1, 2024, to July 31, 2025, according to the Placer.AI.
However, several of NexusPark’s 13 tenants — including the 9,015-square-foot Mother Bear’s Pizza location — have expressed frustration over lower-than-expected foot traffic, raising concerns about whether some of the businesses will be able to stay open without more programming at the fieldhouse during non-peak times of the year.
And some of those frustrations spilled into the open during the Columbus City Council meeting on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Mark Hajduk, co-owner of the Mother Bear’s Pizza, spoke during the city council meeting to give voice to ongoing concerns he said the restaurant and other retail businesses at NexusPark have.
“I’m here tonight on behalf of myself and several small business owners at NexusPark,” Hajduk said. “We have a number of concerns to raise about our operations at NexusPark. We bring these to you in the interest of creating a dialogue and forming a partnership where all parties can succeed.”
Mother Bear’s opened in September, after some delays due to an array of challenges, ranging from negotiating with utilities and moving walls around to having to dig the floor up and install piping.
Hajduk said tenants were initially promised steady foot traffic from fieldhouse visitors, with expectations that access points would be arranged to guide attendees past their storefronts. But those plans have not materialized, and the number of vacant spaces has left parts of the facility feeling “pretty dismal and uninviting” to potential customers, he said.
“We kind of pick and chose what we were going to address tonight, but mainly we’re here to ask: who’s advocating for us? Where’s our voice? Where’s our venue?” Hajduk said. “We understand the city and CRH invested millions of dollars in NexusPark. With all due respect, we invested millions of dollars in this community, in this facility as well.”
The tenants asked the Columbus City Council this week for representation on the NexusPark Community Development Corporation (NPCDC), along with input into event booking, parking capacity and unoccupied retail spaces that they say the city needs to address.
Lucas Bros Burgers — a Columbus staple — also expressed concerns about foot traffic, resorting to pleading on social media for support from the community.
“We have struggled in our current location and have seen a large trending reduction in sales,” a July 14 Facebook post read. “The tournaments that were supposed to be scheduled and bring traffic have been canceled for several months now.”
Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon has apologized to the tenants and pledged to address their concerns.
“I really do apologize to the tenants at NexusPark,” Ferdon said “I’m very sorry that they didn’t feel that they had the ability to connect with the city or parks or the (NexusPark Community Development Corp.) with some of their concerns. We value them being there. They add a lot to what we want to see NexusPark become, which is an ongoing process. …We are really pleased that they’re there and very disappointed that they have those concerns, and we will be addressing them … because we value them being there and want to make sure they’re able to do business there, that it’s profitable for them as we move forward.”
“We knew that it would take between three to five years to get the fieldhouse and NexusPark up and running operationally,” Ferdon added. “We feel that we understand the pain that the some of the retailers expressed. …We have seen foot traffic, and we know that there are times of the year when there is more than other times, but again, our goal is to continue to increase that (foot traffic). It’s just going to take a couple of years to get there.”
Eric Frey, the city’s executive director of administration, is expected to start offering monthly meetings with NexusPark’s tenants to give them an opportunity to express any concerns to city officials.
NexusPark’s early rollout has faced some headwinds, with revenue initially trailing projections, ongoing parking concerns and business-related challenges at CRH. The past few months have also seen the departure of two key parks department figures: Pam Harrell, the former associate director of business services, who retired from the parks department, and longtime parks director Mark Jones, who is set to step down later this month.
Frey is stepping in on an interim basis to help the parks department as it transitions to new leadership, officials said.
There have been 20 events held at the fieldhouse this year, according to a list provided by parks officials. The events have ranged from a football tournament and a wrestling tournament to the IU Columbus commencement ceremony, which resulted in attendees jamming up parking in the area, including at nearby businesses that were not involved in the event.
There are also nine more events scheduled this year, including the Hospice concert, according to the list, which matches NexusPark’s online calendar. However, seven of those nine events are in November and December.
“It slows down a bit in the summer, because, as with most sports, if you can be outside, that is pretty much the intent, you prioritize going outside,” said Nikki Murphy, associate director of recreation for Columbus Parks and Recreation. “…We actually had basketball tournaments scheduled for the slower months. The issue, as with most tournaments, they are run like a business, and unfortunately, the organizer for the originally contracted tournaments stopped running tournaments. So, with him went the contracted dates that would have filled the bulk of the slower months. We then tried to book another basketball organization to come through, and it was just so late in the game that we found out about the contracts being dropped that the organizer, just was not able to get them off the ground.”
“We’re actively working on contracts for the next season,” Murphy added. “…Without that having occurred this year — which was kind of just a one off — then we would have seen much different numbers, even in our off-peak season. So, we’ve already tried to rectify that for next year.”
Murphy also said the parks department has added internal programming that has complemented weekend usage of NexusPark, including volleyball leagues, baseball camps, soccer camps, among other things.
In the meantime, Ferdon said event planners generally schedule tournaments out a couple years in advance and officials are continuing to market the fieldhouse and NexusPark to bring in more events.
“From the perspective of the event planner, they need to schedule their venues two to three years out, and so we knew it would take a couple of years for us to get on some of the schedule for a number of these tournaments and the leagues,” Ferdon said. “And so that’s kind of where we’re at right now, is we’ve got some in place, and we’ve had some events and tournaments this past year, and we’re continuing to market the fieldhouse and NexusPark so that we can add more to the list. It’s an ongoing process, and we’re ramping up operationally, and we’ll continue to do that, and we’re having a few growing pains, but we are we’re appreciative to the tenants that are there, and we will work harder to make sure that they feel like their concerns are addressed.”
