One way voters may determine their choice in the Republican mayoral primary is to consider where the two candidates stand on several big ongoing city projects.
Redeveloping the FairOaks Mall, redeveloping the downtown riverfront, implementing ideas from a new downtown strategic plan and combating substance abuse locally are projects that are proposed, in the early development stages or about a year into execution.
The candidate who is elected mayor for the next four years will play a major role in each project. Currently, the Republican nominee chosen in the May 7 primary is unopposed in the November general election.
The two candidates, incumbent Mayor Jim Lienhoop and challenger Glenn Petri, have differing views about the value of the projects and the role the city should play in them.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Where they stand on the redevelopment of the FairOaks Mall is a prime example.
The city purchased the nearly-empty mall property in December in a partnership with Columbus Regional Health, and with financial assistance from Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County, for $5.9 million total last year. The city’s portion was $4 million.
The plan is to redevelop the FairOaks Mall into a year-round sports recreation and tourism complex, and use it as the future home for the city’s parks department.
“I would love to sell it (the mall). I think it’s a terrible investment for the city of Columbus,” Petri said.
Lienhoop has championed the project.
“This will enhance Columbus as a community people want to live in,” he said in August.
FairOaks Mall
The mall opened in 1990 and has 400,000 square feet of retail space on the 35.36-acre property. However, it has been struggling to attract foot traffic and most of the stores have closed over the last few years.
City and hospital leaders said in August the opportunity to buy the property when it became available, and redevelop it rather than let it fall into further decline, was one they didn’t want to pass on.
Lienhoop said moving parks department offices and activities from the 75-year-old Donner Center to the mall may come a little earlier than later, when considering which parts of redevelopment to focus on first.
The mayor also said moving forward with an indoor air-supported dome facility, for sports such as soccer and softball, also is a priority.
“I would like to see that come along the fourth quarter this year or maybe a little earlier than that,” Lienhoop said.
However, Lienhoop said working with the consulting firm hired to guide the redevelopment efforts, and using its expertise, will be important in determining the order of what will happen to the mall.
Lienhoop also said he envisions several public sessions being part of the process of finalizing a master plan, so that residents can share opinions on what they’d like to see.
One thing to consider, too, will be whether to use all 400,000 square feet or raze some of it, Lienhoop said, because using all of the mall facility would be a lot to maintain.
“I think we would prefer to have something that is more appropriately-sized to the uses we’ll identify,” the mayor said.
Petri would prefer that the city not be directly involved with the project at all. The city spent $4 million it shouldn’t have, he said.
“Buying a mall is a terrible investment. It is built for retail,” Petri said.
What’s worse, he said, is that the purchase price was greater than the property’s appraised value of $5.45 million.
And, Petri said, the money spent so far doesn’t include the costs to convert the space to whatever plans are finalized.
“It’s going to cost the common taxpayer a lot of money,” Petri said.
The challenger also said he doesn’t see what needs to be put in the mall for amateur sports. Columbus already has The Commons with its indoor playground, Foundation For Youth, Mill Race Center and plenty of local athletic clubs that he said provide a lot of services.
“The city shouldn’t compete with them,” Petri said.
He’d rather see a private developer take on the project.
“A wild idea. We have a big need for affordable housing. Maybe we can wrap that mall in housing, much like The Cole. Let a private developer do it,” Petri said.
Another problem with the city’s mall redevelopment plan is the idea of keeping some stores there, Petri said. He said the city has a terrible track record as a landlord, citing the new Commons and the number of restaurants that have come and gone from it.
“One (Snappy Tomato Pizza) didn’t pay rent for a year and nobody knew it,” Petri said.
The Columbus Redevelopment Commission, chaired by then-Mayor Kristen Brown, terminated the lease of Snappy Tomato Pizza in The Commons in January 2014, accepting $18,500 to settle the restaurant’s financial obligations to the city. City officials in the Brown administration learned as early as mid-November 2013 that the restaurant had not paid any of its rent that year.
Moving the parks department offices into the mall also factors into what to do with Donner Center, a deteriorating facility that Lienhoop said would cost $2 million to $3 million to renovate. The mall is a better investment for such money, the mayor said.
“We could spent $2 million to $3 million on Donner and still have 75-year-old facility that is still inadequate for a 21st century parks facility,” Lienhoop said.
Long-term, he said, Donner Center is better suited as just an aquatics center. The remainder, which houses parks offices and meeting space, would be razed. The meeting space would be relocated to the mall, the mayor said.
Petri has a differing opinion about Donner Center.
“I think they ought to renovate Donner Center and keep it. I think cost-wise it’s our best move,” he said.
But, if the parks department really needs a new home, it could lease office space elsewhere — such as the mall if a private developer took over that project, he said.
Riverfront
Lienhoop and other city officials also want to redevelop the downtown riverfront area. An $8.6 million conceptual plan calls for overlooks of the East Fork White River downtown, connections to the People Trail system, an in-water recreation area and removal of the low-head dam between Second and Third streets.
Petri agrees with one aspect of the project — the removal of the low-head dam. “They’re dangerous,” he said.
Additionally, Petri said, the dam is starting to fail on the far shore, causing erosion that sooner or later will expose the old city landfill.
But beyond that, Petri doesn’t think the project is worth pursuing.
“The present administration has proposed a project that the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) is not going to allow. DNR does not want development in the river. DNR does not want the riverwalk in the river,” Petri said.
Petri said he’d like to bring back the proposal for a Riverwalk bridge that Brown tried to get approved, but was met with resistance from the Columbus City Council, when Lienhoop was a councilman.
The $2.5 million Riverwalk that Brown proposed was envisioned as a way to activate riverfront development and connect two portions of the People Trails.
A Riverwalk bridge would not meet the same resistance from DNR that the current proposal is facing, Petri said.
Lienhoop said he’s been surprised by how long the current version of riverfront redevelopment has taken, but said he is confident the project will move forward because DNR continues to work with the city, and the issues of safety and erosion will not go away.
“They will not fix themselves. If we don’t deal with them now while we have the opportunity with a regulatory environment we can work with, I don’t see it getting any easier,” Lienhoop said.
“And, we’ve got the funding to do what we want here. Whether that would be the case 10 years from now, you just can’t tell,” he said.
Removing the low-head dam is important, for safety reasons, and addressing erosion soon is needed, Lienhoop said.
And, connecting the People Trails in that area is a good idea, Lienhoop said. “I feel that the connection is an important piece,” he added.
The on-water recreation aspects of the project are optional, the mayor said, but they have a key role. One reason is practical, he said. Removing the low-head dam would cause the water level to fall 4 or 5 feet, causing the river to narrow and create problems upstream. Installing a man-made slope to create a whitewater rapids effect would keep the river level up and provide the opportunity for water activities, Lienhoop said.
Envision Columbus
City leaders finalized a new strategic plan for the downtown Columbus area late last year, called Envision Columbus, which was created to replace the Vision 20/20 strategic plan that was created in 2005 and had been mostly fulfilled.
“We’re trying to envision what Columbus needs to look like in the next 10 or 15 years, and what projects are required to obtain that vision,” Lienhoop said then.
The plan recommends four initial focus points:
Urban grocery
Conference hotel with performance venue possibility
Townhome pilot
Neighborhood reinvestment
Lienhoop said he’d like to see the hotel/conference center come first because it fills a need for the hotel rooms and event space lost when the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center closed in 2017. Having such a venue helps make Columbus a vibrant and attractive community, and one that can host conventions, Lienhoop said.
“I consider it to be sort of a leader in that it will spawn other activities and some of the other things — some private investment the others may not,” he said.
On May 10, at least 10 developers who have expressed interest in possibly constructing a hotel and conference center will visit the city and view two two sites identified as possible locations for a hotel and conference center. The Envision Columbus plans calls for a hotel and conference center to include:
140-plus guest rooms
a 9,000-square-foot divisible ballroom
4,000 to 5,000 square feet of divisible breakout meeting rooms (at least five divisions)
a three-meal restaurant
About 380 parking spaces
An urban grocery and urban apartments are optional.
Lienhoop said the hope is to reach an agreement with a developer sometime this year.
Petri said he supports Envision Columbus, but doesn’t want to put a lot of taxpayer money into just that one location because the whole city needs to be addressed. “That tax money needs to be spread throughout the city,” Petri said.
Petri said he thinks the row housing and pocket parks proposed in the strategic plan are good ideas. “I think that would be well received in Columbus, but then again, how much is it going to cost?” he said.
Envision Columbus should be driven by private development, not local tax money, Petri said. He also said it’s important that any of the projects proposed in Envision Columbus not encroach on things that are architecturally significant in the city.
ASAP
In April 2017, a joint local effort between city and county government, health leaders, law enforcement, the court system, counselors and some other key stakeholders began addressing substance abuse problems specifically targeted to opioid addiction and overdoses. Called the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress, its focus is on creating system-wide solutions.
Efforts so far have focused on:
A recovery program for men in the Bartholomew County Jail, and continuing a woman’s recovery program there
A resource center, called the Hub, where individuals can find assistance
A drug court
A residential addiction treatment facility for expectant women and mothers
Transforming ASAP into a nonprofit corporation
Also, a donation-matching initiative to fund grants to prevent local substance abuse raised $1 million. About half of that money has been allocated through the Project Prevent grant program to more than 40 local organizations for prevention efforts.
“Progress so far has been breathtaking. We’ve really come a long way,” Lienhoop said.
The two challenges that ASAP faces in the next couple of years are finding a successor to Jeff Jones, who is approaching the end of his two-year commitment as ASAP executive director, and figuring out transitional housing for those who are recovering from substance abuse addiction, Lienhoop said.
“The idea is we don’t want to bring people through the system, give them the treatment they need and then send them back to the same environment came from. We think that is a key factor in a high recidivism rate,” the mayor said.
Having supervised housing to help reintroduce a person to society is important, Lienhoop said. The challenge will be push-back from residents in neighborhoods. The key is to figure out a model that works, he added.
Petri said he believes the city should have a more limited role with the substance abuse issue, focusing on law enforcement.
“As far as rehab for the drug addicts, that’s a medical issue. The hospital administration and nonprofits ought to be addressing that; it’s an insurance thing. I don’t think the city has that much responsibility to get involved with tax money on that,” he said.
The challenger said people have other types of problems for which they need rehabilitation, but the city isn’t being asked to help. And, the city has other issues it needs to focus on, Petri said.
“I don’t want to see tax money spent on something that is not the taxpayer’s fault,” Petri said.
Tax money should be used to maintain what the city has, Petri said, such as roads, buildings, the police department, the fire department and the street department.
“All those are important. And we need to make sure they are getting what they need and spending it wisely,” Petri said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”The Petri file” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Glenn Petri
Age: 69
Current occupation: Retired from industrial sales
Education: Bachelor of arts in social sciences, urban planning at Southern Illinois University
Previous elected offices held (and when): None
Community organization memberships and service: Past member of Columbus Downtown Inc., time keeper for Southside basketball, board member of Columbus Area Railroad Club.
Family: Widower, two adult children, two grandchildren
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”The Lienhoop file” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Jim Lienhoop
Age: 65
Current occupation: Mayor of Columbus
Education: Bachelor of science in business, accounting from Indiana University
Previous elected offices held (and when): Columbus City Council, selected to fill in for a council member called to active duty for nine months in 2006 and again for 2008 to 2011. Elected as an at-large member of Columbus City Council for the years 2012 to 2015. Elected mayor for the years 2016 to present.
Community organization memberships and service: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church; certified public accountant (inactive); Accelerate Indiana Municipalities, Finance Committee chairman; Administrative Resources Association, president; Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress-Bartholomew County, board member; Ball State University-Indiana Communities Institute, Silver Certificate; Bartholomew County Solid Waste Management District, board member; CEO’s for Cities, speaker; Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, board member; Community Education Coalition, board member; FairOaks Community Development Corporation, president; Greater Columbus Economic Development Corp., board member; Heritage Fund – The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County, board member; Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, speaker; IUPUC Advisory Board, member; National League of Cities, speaker; Olympic Quarterback Club, co-founder; Rotary, Paul Harris Fellow; U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Family: Wife, Pam; two adult children
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Coming next Sunday” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Republic’s third of three stories about the Republican nomination for mayor in the primary will focus on a variety of issues the next mayor will have a hand in, such as housing and economic development. See the April 28 edition for details.
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Early voting” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The primary is May 7.
Early voting continues at the Bartholomew County Courthouse in downtown Columbus.
Voters who live in the city may cast their ballots in person at the courthouse until May 3 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The courthouse will be open for early voting on two Saturdays – April 27 and May 4 – from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Early voting is also available at Donner Center, at 739 22nd Street, from April 29 to May 3 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Saturday, May 4 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
