Group: Road done for developer, not safety
Little Turtle subdivision wants answers from city
Darlene Slater had lived in the Little Turtle subdivision off Route 161 on Columbus’ Northeast Side for over three decades when a postcard from the city showed up in her mailbox in 2019 telling her there was a traffic-safety problem in her neighborhood, and the city was going to fix it.
Curious what it could be, she attended a public meeting a short time later where the city presented maps of a major reconstruction plan involving the separate Little Turtle Way entrance and exit roads at the entrance to the subdivision, which are separated by a wide expanse of spacious, park-like grassy acres.
In its place, the city wanted to tear up about 2,100 feet of the one-way northbound entrance road and move it to the west, creating one Little Turtle Way with two-way traffic separated by just a yellow centerline.
More than 100 residents of the Northeast Side neighborhood showed up at the meeting, Slater said, and many indicated they were unaware of any safety problem that was the supposed basis for the proposed reconstruction. None got answers to their main question: Where did this expensive plan come from?
“There was no question-and-answer,” said Slater, president of the Little Turtle Civic Association. She said she left the meeting angry and frustrated.
A 2019 city fact sheet said the proposed project was being undertaken because Little Turtle Way had deteriorated and needs to be rebuilt. “Additionally, there is a lack of bicycle and pedestrian facilities and low visibility at the intersection of Longrifle Road and Little Turtle Way. This gives the city the opportunity to address all of these issues at the same time,” it says.
“By consolidating the existing
divided north and south lanes of Little Turtle Way, the new western roadway would cost less for taxpayers to reconstruct, maintain and repair over the life of the road. This would also provide more space to build sidewalks and a shared-use path,” the city said.
In addition, the city planned to construct a roundabout at the intersection of Little Turtle Way and Longrifle Road to improve safety at that intersection.
But residents now say in an ongoing lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court that the new road layout plan wasn’t undertaken for safety. The real purpose of the project, they contend, was to free up land for a developer who had purchased the grassy median currently sandwiched between the north and south one-way lanes with the purpose of constructing a condo project there.
Effectively, residents charge in the suit, the city is acting as a kind of partner in a private project for a developer who has made campaign contributions to some local officials — kicking in $6 million-plus in city construction dollars to move an existing public road out of his way. A majority of the grassy park median and the land where the northbound-only Little Turtle Way entrance roadway now sits would then be used for a proposed condo project, residents claim.
The Columbus Department of Public Service and other city officials have declined to speak with The Dispatch about the matter, citing the pending lawsuit.
City documents the lawsuit unearthed, and other public records The Dispatch obtained, show a timeline of how this project came to be.
In April 2015, an entity controlled by developer Mo Dioun purchased the Golf Club at Little Turtle for $2.1 million. The deal involved 12 parcels, including three that constitute the 5.5 acres of green space between the two roads, one of the last pieces of undeveloped land in Little Turtle.
Dioun then hired former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman as his lobbyist on March 20, 2017, records show. According to city disclosures that Coleman filed, the subject he would be dealing with was an ordinance for $5.84 million in road improvements at Little Turtle. On March 21, 2017, an email shows a meeting between Coleman and Dioun at Little Turtle, according to an exhibit in the case.
By April 2018, the first ordinance for the proposed roadway project had been drafted and sent to the city council — more than a year before the city sent postcards to Little Turtle residents. The city Public Service department requested $350,000 for engineering and trafficstudy work for the project, and hired Carpenter Marty. The transportation engineering firm employed John Gallagher, the husband of Jennifer Gallagher, the city’s public-service director, court records and city emails show.
John Gallagher, a traffic engineer, told The Dispatch that he wasn’t personally involved in designing the new one-roadway layout for Little Turtle Way, although he acknowledged he supervised the traffic study report his firm prepared for the city. He said his wife played no role in the awarding of the contract and removed herself from the process when his company submitted something.
Jennifer Gallagher testified in the court case that she didn’t know where the idea to consolidate the two lanes originated. Another official in her department testified that it was first proposed in the engineering and trafficsafety study. Gallagher said in court she had no reason to doubt that.
The 2018 ordinance that financed the engineering study said design work was “anticipated to include the consolidation (and) repurposing ... (of ) excess vehicular infrastructure” on Little Tuttle Way. That was written some 13 months before the traffic study was finished.
Residents say they asked the city for a copy of the study but weren’t allowed to see it. The city did give a copy of the study, dated April 2, 2019, to The Dispatch.
A “Problem Description” at the beginning of the study report states: “These improvements will provide a safer and more walkable journey for bicyclists and pedestrians, and safe and efficient route for motorists traveling to and from SR-161. Proposed improvements include consolidation of the divided north and south lanes of Little Turtle Way to one western roadway, a roundabout at Longrifle Road, addition of sidewalks and/or shared use paths, traffic control, and intersection lighting. A traffic signal is proposed to be installed at the Little Turtle Way and SR-161 WB on-ramp intersection in addition to lane assignment changes.”
The vast majority of the approximately 125-page document contains detailed
traffic engineering information, such as an analysis of intersections, ramps, traffic “weave” and the Route 161 freeway interchange, as well as technical details of “build” and “no build” scenarios, “levels of service” or LOS, and density ratings as of year 2040.
However, the report also notes that “proposed redevelopment is planned for the area along Little Turtle Way north of SR-161,” which is the developer’s land at the issue of the dispute.
The plaintiffs in the court case found the city in possession of a map that American Structure Point created, dated March 21, 2017 — two years before its study — that shows the consolidated Little Turtle Way and its roundabout, according to an exhibit that the city included in discovery and is now part of the case file, said Phil Harmon, an attorney leading the court battle who is also a resident of the subdivision. It’s unclear who paid for it.
The city is using the power of eminent domain — the ability of the state to take private land — to acquire space from 10 parcels to make room for the project.
The residents’ lawsuit claims that the city violated the state’s Open Meetings Act in fast-tracking the project through the city council without debate. That act requires that city business, with a few exceptions of which none directly deal with planning new roads, be done only in public meetings with advance notice.
The lawsuit claims the council decided the Little Turtle project in private, then sped it to a vote this summer as an emergency item to thwart residents’ attempts to stop it. The actual ordinance paying for the almost $6 million in work, on the other hand, says it was designated an emergency “to ensure the safety of the traveling public.”
Despite the statement of a public safety emergency, a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge issued a temporary restraining order in July that halted work on the site. Harmon is seeking a preliminary injunction in the case.
“It’s all fake,” Harmon said. “The whole thing is fake. It’s all designed to make it look it like they’re listening to the public.”
Lara Baker-morrish, general counsel for the Columbus city attorney’s office, said the city’s charter addresses open meetings, and the city council complied with the mandate.
She said the city council did things properly when it passed the resolution on a consent vote — typically reserved for routine items — earlier this year because it had been published in the agenda, giving the public a chance to see and comment on it. She also said that council members did not deliberate on it beforehand.
“There was an extensive amount of contact with the community. I feel that the public did have at that point have the opportunity. Being on the consent agenda does not prevent public comment,” Baker-morrish said.
She said the council would have to comply with the state’s Open Meeting Act if Columbus did not have a charter. But even if the city had to follow Ohio law, the state’s provisions do not prohibit a consent agenda.
“We do feel we complied with requirements under the city charter,” she said, declining to address the other concerns raised by the residents.
In a motion filed in the case, Harmon wrote: “The city will end up spending over $6.08 million dollars of taxpayer funds to compress a beautiful two-road, four-lane rolling green boulevard into a tightly packed, congested and dangerous single road, while the developer will be given prime real estate upon which to build more multi-million-dollar, multifamily housing at taxpayer expense. It is an outrage!”
“There were numerous meetings between Mr. Dioun and both public service and council President (Shannon) Hardin’s office and council member (Shayla) Favor’s office, and the city has not provided detailed information about those meetings,” Harmon said during a recent interview.
“We believe evidence shows that (those) meetings were related to the Little Turtle Way project,” he said.
Neither Coleman nor Dioun returned calls for this story.
From early 2017 through early 2020, Dioun and his wife, Mina, gave at least $74,250 to the campaigns of Mayor Andrew J. Ginther, City Attorney Zach Klein and various city council members, city disclosures show. More than $40,000 of that, about 55%, was donated from February 2017 through July 2018.
When asked in court who came up with the idea to relocate the road, James Young, an administrator with the city
Public Service Department, said it started with a traffic study by Carpenter Marty Transportation Inc., the firm that had employed John Gallagher. Young didn’t recall under questioning whether John Gallagher actually helped author the study. Carpenter Marty won the work by receiving the highest score from a city evaluation committee out of four competing engineering firms, the city said.
John Gallagher said that his initial findings were that there was too little traffic on Little Turtle Way, not too much, and that it should be given “road diet,” bringing it from four total lanes down to two.
In February, city project manager Kevin Thomas told The Dispatch that the improvements are aimed at easing congestion in the area, including the roundabout and installing a combination right-turn and through lane at the west ramp from Little Turtle Way to Route 161. Currently, there are just dedicated lanes for each of those movements, he said.
Mid-ohio Regional Planning Commission traffic counts from 2017 showed that more than 13,000 vehicles traveled daily on Little Turtle Way at Route 161, with about 3,900 vehicles daily on Little Turtle Way through the Longrifle Road intersection.
Close to 12,000 vehicles daily traveled the westbound ramp from Little Turtle Way to Route 161. By comparison, 14,263 vehicles travel daily along Cooke Road on the North Side as it runs parallel to Interstate 71 and serves as a way to and from the freeway
Many residents of Little Turtle neighborhood, which is north of Blendon Woods Metro Park, have opposed the proposed roadway reconstruction plan on the grounds that it will hurt the neighborhood’s character.
“...The boulevard has been in existence for 50 years, so the green space will be replaced by gray space,” Slater said. “People wanted to live at Little Turtle because of its unique setting.
“This is our home. We want to preserve it,” she said.
Another resident, Debra Abbott, said the city council appears to be trying to shove the project through.
“This is not for the public business only. All of this is just for the developer,” Abbott said.
There were two days of hearings on the court case, on Nov. 8-9, and City Council President Hardin and Council member Mitchell Brown testified last week.
David Miller, a spokesman for Hardin, said in an email that the council president held a routine meeting in 2017 at Little Turtle, when he was chair of the council’s Public Service Committee. But he said Hardin would not be available for an interview by The Dispatch because of the ongoing legal matter.
At the Nov. 9 hearing, David Kopech, which is the name of an attorney who legal documents show has represented the condo developer Dioun in past matters, was nearly thrown out of the courtroom by Franklin County magistrate Jennifer Hunt after court video shows him talking from the public seats, appearing to coach the assistant city attorney while a witness was giving testimony.
Kopech, who eventually apologized and was allowed to remain in the courtroom, did not return a message The Dispatch left with his office. bbush@dispatch.com @Reporterbush mferench@dispatch.com @Markferenchik