BuckeyeBlog

The dispatch reported yesterday:

[City of Columbus] council members approved plans for a new city-owned parking garage at 4th and Elm streets Downtown. Their action allows the Capital South Community Urban Redevelopment Corp. to move forward with plans to levy a special assessment on about 50 property owners within 800 feet of the project.

One of them, Due Amici restaurant owner Jeff Mathes, said a few big developers are forcing the financing scheme on everyone else. Former Capital South Director John Rosenberger said property owners accounting for 80 percent of the $5.7 million expected to be raised are on board with the plan.

In addition to the assessment, parking income and property taxes on new and renovated Downtown buildings will pay for the $15.3 million garage.

Why force area business owners to pay for a parking garage? If the garage is really needed, a private company can build it and make their investment back by charging customers to use it.

A bit of a thumbsucker, but still a nice story, about Columbus’s downtown. Are German Village and the Short North areas for cool people, is City Center a vacant pit, and can a woman married to a New Albany doctor afford to throw a party for 70? Yes, indeed, and downtown condos are selling slowly in Columbus and more slowly in Toledo. It’s less news than observation.

But it is what it is. What I want to know is, what is this story doing in the Blade? Are they recruiting Toledoans to come to Columbus?