Downtown due for more apartment construction
The apartment boom in Downtown Columbus continues with three projects that are expected to add about a combined 335 apartments Downtown, along with additional office and retail space.
They include:
■ Continental Real Estate Cos. and Connect Realty have joined forces to build a mixed-use building and garage on the southwest corner of Fourth and State streets. That site now is mostly surface parking.
■ Developer Connect plans to turn a century-old
six-story building at Fourth and Long streets that was formerly occupied by city workers into about 40 apartments.
■ Solove Real Estate has proposed a 95-unit apartment building at 55 E. Long Street, connected to the 755-space Buckeye Garage at the corner of Pearl Street.
The developers of the first two projects hope to get started next year. Solove owner Jerry Solove could not be reached for comment on his plan, which is set for conceptual review by the Downtown Commission on Tuesday.
The new units would join 1,360 Downtown apartments under construction and 130 completed in 2016, according to a 2016 year-end report from the Capital Crossroads and Discovery Special Improvement districts.
“We’re definitely positive about Downtown demand,” said Brad DeHays, founder of Connect Realty. “Residential has been very strong.”
DeHays is working on several other Downtown projects, including the historic renovation of the Municipal Light and Power building at the western edge of the Arena District and the complete overhaul of the Long Street parking garage across the street from the site of the proposed Solove project.
The 529-space garage, which had been condemned and vacant for more than three years, is set to reopen May 1.
DeHays signed a deal with the city recently to buy the building and several other connected parcels from the city of Columbus. He hopes to begin renovations in late 2018. He plans to build a parking structure with more than 300 spaces next door along Fourth Street.
Connect will be 50-50 partners with Continental Real Estate on the mixed-use project at Fourth and State streets, a block from the Statehouse and Columbus Commons park. The site includes a surfacing parking lot and a small building with a few offices.
Continental founding partner Frank Kass said they will work with tenants to find other space over the next several months.
An attached parking garage would have about 400 spaces, and a restaurant likely will go on the corner of Fourth and State, Kass said. He said his company is in talks with several possible restaurant operators.
Kass said he envisions a fifth-floor deck overlooking the Statehouse that would be shared by the lowerfloor office tenants and residents of the apartments, which will be on the upper floors of the building, which he’s targeting at 14 to 15 floors.
Continental Office, a separate office design, furniture and services company that spun off from Continental Real Estate 11 years ago, will likely take office space in the building for a Downtown showroom to complement its main location on the North Side.
In the interim, Continental Office CEO Ira Sharfin said his company plans to move into shared space with new coworking offices on Fourth Street at Chestnut, just south of Nationwide Boulevard, where they are working with Columbus-based Hopewell as it opens its second Downtown location. The offices are expected to open this summer.
Both Kass and DeHays say that, with help from city and state incentives, longvacant or underused properties being developed in the urban core are spurring even more investment in the area.
DeHays points to Connect’s renovation of the Long Street garage as an impetus for the newly announced Long Street projects.
“I’d like to think that taking a condemned structure and renovating it gave a little confidence to do something like the (Solove) project,” DeHays said. “No one wants to be across from an empty, unused structure.”