Developer, Metro Parks working on acquisition
Metro Parks and Wagenbrenner Development are collaborating on a project that would feature a new park plus a development of housing and offices on former quarry land five miles from Downtown.
Columbus-based Wagenbrenner is in contract to buy most of the 607-acre property, and it has an option to buy the entire site. The developer hopes to close the deal by the end of the year.
Tim Moloney, executive director of Metro Parks, said the parks system then would buy a total of up to 260 acres from the developer in two phases for a park. He said parks officials began looking at the property more than a decade ago as a potential park site. If realized, the park would be the 20th in the Metro Parks system and the second within the Interstate 270 Outerbelt.
“This property has been on our radar for quite some time,” Moloney said. “We’ll have a Metro Park within five miles of every doorstep in central Ohio.”
Wagenbrenner envisions a development that includes condos, apartments, offices and service retail on the site. Groundbreaking likely would be a couple of years down the road after environmental cleanup is completed. There are no details yet on how many housing units would be included, or what the square footage would be of various sections of the development.
The first phase of the new Metro Park would be established on 60 acres on the southern part of the site.
The park land would feature quarry lakes, rock cliffs, vegetation, a trail system and a 25-foot waterfall, plus 2 miles of waterfront along the Scioto River. Moloney envisions areas for climbing and rappelling and mountain biking, and there would be a boulder garden for exploring plus canoeing, kayaking and paddleboarding opportunities. The site also includes an old railroad trestle and tunnel.
It would provide a link in the regional biketrail system connecting Downtown to Hilliard and Plain City through the Heritage Rail Trail.
There’s a diverse wildlife population on the site; Moloney said there’s been a beaver working in the ponds.
He said officials are well aware of the dangers that quarry sites pose but that Metro Parks would keep the site safe. Shelly Materials still operates a limestone quarry on part of the land.
Moloney said Wagenbrenner officials approached Metro Parks 18 months ago about a possible public-private development. “That’s where we continued to progress with discussions,” he said.
The purchase price is still being worked out, he said. Metro Parks received $1.2 million in Clean Ohio money to help pay for the land acquisition.
The site has been owned since the mid-1980s by an affiliate company of Specialty Restaurants Corp. The Anaheim, California-based company, which still counts The Boat House near Downtown among its nationwide portfolio of restaurants, once operated a mining-themed restaurant overlooking the quarry. It was razed in the 1990s.
Wagenbrenner has a history of developing brownfield sites close to Downtown, including Gowdy Field and the former Timken site, which has been repurposed as a headquarters for Rogue Fitness. Joseph M. Reidy, general counsel for Wagenbrenner, said the company has met with the Ohio Water Development Authority to discuss one of the low-interest loans that are available for cleanup projects. He said that the end of the Clean Ohio brownfield grant program several years ago has “frankly made it more challenging” to redevelop such sites.
Reidy said the property, which he called “by far the largest undeveloped chunk of land” within I-270, is right in Wagenbrenner’s wheelhouse.
“We look for large assemblages of land within the urban core,” he said.