Hospital buys old Africentric site

REAL ESTATE

The auction drew about 25 people, but the room was silent when Columbus City Schools’ former Africentric School near German Village officially went on the block.

No one offered anything — at first.

“This is going to be a quick auction,” Ryan Aiello, an attorney from Dinsmore & Shohl who conducted the auction, said as the clock ticked away with no bidder on what the district was billing as its “crown jewel” of surplus property. The site is just across the Interstate 71/Interstate 70 inner belt from Downtown.

Finally, the silence was broken by Tim Robinson, chief financial officer of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which offered the minimum bid of $15.025 million. Seconds later, that was that.

“Sold,” Aiello declared, as Nationwide Children’s completed its acquisition of the entire 18-acre school site. The hospital had paid $19.2 million in 2013 for the former school’s athletic fields east of Grant Avenue, which it has used to expand its campus westward.

Nationwide Children’s immediate plan for the new acquisition is surface parking, which would require the demolition of the 127,900-square-foot school built in the 1960s, said Patty McClimon, the hospital’s senior vice president of planning and facilities.

“It has some asbestos in it, and it’s not very safe to have a vacant building there,” McClimon said. “So we will take it down. We’ll work with the neighborhood groups to make sure they are supportive of how we are looking at the demolition.”

“It’s more land-banking for future use,” Robinson said after the auction. “We assume it will (ultimately) have some hospital use, but unspecified.”

Other interested buyers attended the auction, apparently in the hope that there would be no bid. In that event, they could have submitted other offers with contingencies that aren’t allowed as part of a purchase at auction. Under the auction’s strict terms, the deal must close “as is” by the end of January. The Columbus Board of Education is expected to approve the sale quickly.

The district also sold two other properties Tuesday. The former Fifth Avenue Elementary School, on a 3.1- acre site at 1300 Forsythe Ave. in the University District south of Ohio State University, was bought by the sole bidder, Chicago- based Clark Street Holdings. The 30,000- square- foot building fetched the minimum bid of $ 5.29 million.

Francisco Rios, vice president of investments for Clark Street, said the company is not ready to discuss its plans for the site. Clark Street is a national developer that is building a three-tower highrise residential complex in Phoenix, according to news reports.

Also selling was the Maennerchor Building, 966 S. High St. in German Village, which was bid up to $460,000, or 42 percent over its minimum-bid price of $325,000. Galbreath Properties bought the 6,500-square-foot building, which dates to 1930.

The $20.78 million raised by Tuesday’s sales will go into a district fund that is used for maintaining and improving other district facilities. By state law, the money can’t be used to fund ongoing operations.