After months of consideration, Campus Partners recently decided on a new developer for their University Gateway Project following the departure of the fee-based developer Druker Co. in July.
Guess who they named — themselves. It’s just another bizarre turn in the project that has been a campus mirage for years now.
This begs the obvious question — why didn’t Campus Partners avoid all the rigamarole of the past few years and name themselves developer at the beginning of the project?
Now that Campus Partners has almost complete control over the project, the proposed center has become more and more of an exclusive effort between Ohio State and the few members of Campus Partners. The project will be overseen by Jones Lang LaSalle, a company specializing in corporate real estate and investment service management, but from the looks of it, the group won’t have much say in the Gateway Center.
Business owners, students and Columbus residents have expressed doubts about the project since its inception, and despite numerous town-meeting style question and answer sessions about how to best develop the area, the plans have barely changed in the eight years they’ve been in the works.
Campus Partners’ president Terry Foegler made a particularly troublesome comment to the Columbus Dispatch following the announcement of the new developer. Foegler said hiring a firm to manage the project rather than one that had a claim in the project “worked better because OSU offices and housing now likely will make up more of the project, leaving less space for private development.”
Rather than rebuilding a vibrant High Street scene — bars, shopping and all — it’s becoming more likely that OSU will take advantage of the land Campus Partners acquired to spread campus buildings, residence halls and more to the east side of High Street.
Visitors to The Lantern’s Web site who search for articles about Campus Partners will find 606 article hits. The Gateway Center has been in its planning stages for far too long. Perhaps this latest development will turn out to be a good thing. Now that Campus Partners has no roadblocks to implementing its plan, maybe we’ll see a revitalized High Street before every student who reads this has graduated.
