1. The facade plans for the development will ensure it looks like the rest of downtown.
Council members and city staff have been working with site developer, Columbus Realty Partners, to make sure there is a cohesive look when shoppers leave the historic downtown and continue south to the new development.
Robert Shaw, the lead developer of the site and co-owner of Columbus Realty Partners, said the best way to judge the look of the development is to see the actual materials, not the renderings. Shaw said he will put a small display on the site for residents to see.
2. The project will be done in two phases and the land is no longer city-owned.
Once Columbus Realty Partners signed the development agreement with the city, they purchased the land. Once the development is finished, the city will then give an already agreed upon amount of funds back to the developer in return for additional public parking spaces and infrastructure built within the development.
3. The project will break ground this winter.
Residents will begin seeing dirt move on the site in January and within 11 months plans to have tenants moving in. As it stands now, Shaw said he has one major tenant for the office space planned for the site, however the remaining retail portion will be built as spec space.
"It is uncommon to build a large amount of retail spec space if it were a large development standing on its own," Shaw said. "However, since this is a mix of retail, residential and office, it is not that uncommon. We will be bringing a large amount of employees to downtown with this site along with the residential aspects so I think that retail space will fill in with no problem."
