Columbus office at 350 E. Broad won’t be torn down yet, panel decides
A city panel on Tuesday rejected a request to demolish an East Broad Street office building after grappling with the question: Would Downtown be better off with an empty office building or a grass-covered lot?
The owners of the building, at 350 E. Broad St., on the northwest corner of East Broad and Grant Avenue, asked to tear down the building after determining it could not be renovated.
“Since acquiring the property in 2016, ownership has explored various renovation scenarios, ultimately determining that the existing building itself hinders the successful redevelopment of the site,” wrote the owners, an affiliate of Lawyers Development Corp. in Columbus.
“This building essentially is an obsolete shell presenting a number of challenges. Furthermore, it fails to capture the site’s potential for greater density in a prominent gateway location at the intersection of Broad Street and Grant Avenue.”
A year after buying the building, the owners proposed replacing it with a six-story apartment building. The current five-story structure, built in 1950 and renovated in 1986, has been empty for years and is “significantly deteriorated,” said Robert Meyers, owner of Lawyers Development Corp.
Meyers asked the Downtown Commission for approval to demolish the building and replace it with a grass-covered lot while plans for another building were prepared.
Downtown Commissioners noted that the commission does not ordinarily approve demolishing buildings without a clear plan to replace them.
“We have a longstanding policy – it’s in our guidelines: A building doesn’t come down until there’s a replacement use,” Downtown Commission Chair Steve Wittmann told Meyers.
“And then the question is, the standard, is the new building that’s going to replace it better than the one that’s going away?”
Wittmann and others noted that the commission has made exceptions, such as when the building is considered unsafe. In June, the commission approved the demolition of the Main Bar, even though the developer presented no firm plans to immediately replace it.
Meyers said he planned to develop the site or sell it to another developer within two years. He said the site would be planted in grass, not left vacant or as a parking lot.
“We’re putting in a nonproductive use (grass) to allow for the sale or our own development,” he said, adding that he and his partners have “gone through eight or nine variations of projects on the site with no luck.”
Wittmann and others said they would be in favor of developing the site, and acknowledged that a grass-filled lot might be better than a parking lot.
“It could almost be the equivalent of somebody coming in and saying, ‘We’ve got this dilapidated building that we’ll take down for a park there until I’m ready to redevelop it.’ So that’s the question, is it better?”
But after other commissioners said they worried about setting a precedent and about leaving another empty hole on Broad Street, the commission rejected the request to demolish the building 7 to 1, with Otto Beatty III casting the di.
@JimWeiker
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