By Marla Matzer Rose and JD Malone, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – The 141-year-old North Market, with its iconic rooster and faded paint, is tying its future to a brick-and-glass skyscraper.
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Columbus, which owns the market and the 2-acre parcel it sits on, chose a proposal from Wood Companies and Schiff Capital Group that would take the market’s surface parking lot and transform it into a “neighborhood-defining centerpiece,” with a 35-story office-and-residential tower, an outdoor plaza designed for farmers markets and a two-story, light-filled atrium connecting the market building to the tower.
The tower would include 200 residential units, mostly apartments; 40,000 square feet of office space; 28,000 square feet of retail; and 25,350 square feet of restaurant space. The estimated cost is $120 million.
The existing surface parking lot would be replaced by a 130-space underground garage.
Wood and Schiff want to break ground by mid-2018 and complete the tower in 2020. The North Market would remain operational throughout the construction.
Tallest buildings in Columbus:
Rhodes Tower 629’
Leveque Tower 555’
William Green Building 530’
Huntington Center 512’Market Tower 400′ (approx.)
-Source: City of Columbus
Market Tower, as it’s being called, would be mostly privately financed, with several million dollars in expected city funds going toward infrastructure, public parking and the outdoor plaza. The project would qualify for a 15-year, 100 percent tax abatement as a Downtown community reinvestment area, and likely could get a financing assist from the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority, which has issued tax-exempt bonds for similar large projects, such as Grandview Yard.
Franklin County is exploring ways it can aid the project. The development is important to the county because of its proximity to the Greater Columbus Convention Center, said James Schimmer, director of the Franklin County Economic Development and Planning Department. Schimmer stressed, though, that the county’s support wouldn’t be the same as the deal it made several years ago to provide financing for the Hilton Columbus Downtown next door.