City set to OK tax incentives for Ohio State’s new district
The Columbus City Council is set to vote Monday on a jobs-incentive agreement for Ohio State that would allow the public university to keep 40% of city income taxes from new workers at a new development area west of campus.
The deal also involves the creation of a new city tax-increment financing (TIF) district for Ohio State to help subsidize the new development in association with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Jobsohio. TIFS allow property taxes to be diverted to pay for qualified expenses, such as new streets, sewers and utilities.
The proposed “Innovation District” project is aimed at developing new gene and cell therapies to treat disorders, while creating 20,000 direct and indirect jobs over the next decade, officials have said.
According to the proposed legislation, Ohio State plans to spend $3 billion to $4 billion in capital investments within the Innovation District over 20 to 30 years. That includes 4 to 6 million square feet of laboratory and commercial office space, up to 500,000 square feet for medical building, 1,500 to 2,000 residential units, 100,000 to 200,000 square feet of retail space, and a 180- to 220-bed hotel.
Under the jobs-incentive agreement, the city estimates it would still receive a net increase of $117.5 million in income taxes from the 12,000 new public and private jobs that would be created in the Innovation District. The university would retain an estimated $47 million in income taxes generated by the development, which is bounded roughly by Kenny, North Star and Kinnear roads and Lane Avenue.
The city council will also be asked Monday to dissolve a jobs-incentive agreement that was set to expire soon with Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center in which the university has kept 30% of the city income taxes paid by employees there. That deal, signed in 2010, was set to expire when OSU had retained a total of $35 million, a limit which is close to being reached, said city Development Director Michael Stevens.
The new agreement will offer Ohio State the 40% incentive on all new jobs created at Wexner Medical Center going forward — if the university completes its planned new 1.9 millionsquare-foot, 850-bed inpatient hospital that it announced last year, Stevens said.
Under the TIF agreement, the Innovation District would get a 30-year, 100% exemption from property taxes, with the money diverted for improvements to the parcels.
Columbus City Schools would receive the same amount of property tax revenue it would have received without the TIF exemption, the legislation states.
In February, The Dispatch reported that Ohio State was investing $650 million in new buildings south of Lane Avenue and west of Kenny Road, which are rising now. Nationwide Children’s Hospital is to invest $350 million, while Jobsohio, the state’s privatized economic development agency, is pumping in $100 million.
In other business Monday, the city council is expected to vote to approve council residential districts that no more than one elected council member may live in so as to spread their residency across the city. All candidates will still be elected by voters citywide, not from wards or districts.
The new council district maps that members will review Monday were drafted by a special advisory Council Residential Districting Commission created by the council. The council is required to approve one of three maps presented by the commission.
For the 2023 council election, all current terms will be canceled and two new seats added, increasing the number of elected council members from the current seven members to nine members. Voters will elect an entirely new council, with each member living in a separate residential district. wbush@gannett.com @Reporterbush