Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren from WFIU WTIU news this week. We're joined by Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Well, welcome
Speaker 3
and welcome to the community first hub, part of Nexus Park here in Columbus. We're thrilled to have you here. Yeah, just
Speaker 1
say we are not in the office at city hall today. We are not we are at a special location. I was here back in December. Well before the grand opening of Nexus Park. And at that time, Mayor was mayor, let up last show on Ask the mayor. So we he gave me a tour of the construction. And I think the hardwood floor was just going in, right. And of course now it's all complete. And we'll have photos on the web companion of this for those just listening to this podcast, right. You can see all the photos later. But this is amazing. grand opening, but about a month ago, right.
Speaker 3
We've had a couple of grand openings. Columbus Regional Health had theirs in last part of January, we had the grand opening at the State of the City address March 6 for the Fieldhouse and this space and then April 12, we will be doing a grand opening for the community in park space. And that's really it for a while until the exterior campus is done sometime early next year. And then then we'll be complete. But yeah, a lot has occurred in the past year.
Speaker 1
And I would say this is an amazing story for a city this size is when you walk in here. I mean, you think you're in Indianapolis or something. I mean, this place is Mammoth. For those who don't know, this was a former malls fairoaks small credit to the city bought it and turned it into a but it was also a collaboration. It
Speaker 3
truly was in back in 2018, the City of Columbus and Columbus Regional Health collaborated to purchase this mall, we had some funding from our local Heritage Fund, Heritage Foundation. And so we were able to purchase them all we were a little concerned just because of where it's located in the city a really critical part and weren't quite sure what was going to happen. And so we felt like the adaptive reuse of this old mall we were told by construction people that had had good bones. And so we originally started just thinking health and wellness, because the parks collaborate a lot with Columbus Regional Health. And then as a community we've been looking at an indoor sports complex for probably 10 1215 years. And so somebody had the bright idea it was not me that we tear down part of the part of the old mall and build 150,000 square foot Fieldhouse, with turf and hardcourt and we were able to use some edit bonds in order to do that and you know, here we are.
Speaker 1
So it's been about a month for the majority of it of course, what are the initial impressions, how is it going?
Speaker 3
We have heard nothing but rave reviews which doesn't happen very often. So I'm sure there are some complaints but nobody has been breaking them to me yet. Our our local Express soccer Express teams have been practicing we've had a couple of tournaments for the past couple weekends. And everyone is just so pleased when we we built this we built it to be very flexible and we we built it to do it right because we knew we only had one shot are the the restaurant tourists who are here are very pleased with the with the traffic they're getting so far and we've got some new ones new restaurants coming in. And we had our community wide East Greg Hunt was here Saturday, and we had probably to 2000 plus kids and parents here. And it was great to be able to have it indoors. And, and we had people who stayed quite a long time. So we've been really pleased so far. The traffic on the Columbus Regional Health side, on the west side, they've opened all of their offices and the community has been very, very pleased with how that's going. So we're really, I keep saying the workplace, but we're, we're really pleased with the results so far. And like I said earlier in in April, in a couple of weeks, we open up the community park space, so the entire area then will be available for people to use.
Speaker 1
And I assume that as time goes on, and more people are drawn here, you'll see more and more people and what was part of the former mall into more shops and businesses, right?
Speaker 3
We were talking about the evolution, we have actually a couple of partners who are looking at three and four are the spaces to combining that and we'll be announcing that in the next month or so. But yes, we see more and more interest once retail establishments and restaurant owners see how many people were bringing into the facility, how many work here and how many will come with the with the weekend events?
Speaker 1
How about so the Fieldhouse portion is mainly a rental space for what softball it's being used by an IU
Speaker 3
IU Columbus is using it for their baseball or baseball and softball maybe practice but their this is their home court for basketball and volleyball, right? But yes, we are able to accommodate softball and baseball, volleyball, soccer, of course, basketball pickleball rustling. So I think we've covered a lot of the sports and then we built it in so that in the future, we could be very, very flexible. For instance, other field houses might put aggregate under their turf, we put seven inches of concrete under both our turf and our home court so that you can drive a semi truck onto it. So our goal is in the future that we'll have trade shows here. So we built it to be extremely flexible. So
Speaker 1
I believe from what I remember before it was the rental of the Fieldhouse that was going to help pay for the operation of it and keep correct sustainable, right? It's only I know it's only been a month. But are those numbers starting to even out a little bit?
Speaker 3
They're looking very, very good. We're booked out already into 25. And so yeah, our goal at the very beginning is that the sustainability of the Fieldhouse will be paid for by through rental fees are through we've got an edit bond that's covering the cost of the borrowing that we did to pay for that the rest of the facility, Columbus Regional Health pays for their piece. city parks will pay for the normal piece that they do through through tax dollars. And then on the east end where we have our rental space, that will be sustainability from leases from restaurants and retail establishments. So if every if everything works out the way it will in a couple of years, so it'll be fully sustainable.
Speaker 1
And of course, there are many different funding mechanisms. But I know one of them and just probably a major one was the ready grant from the state. How important was that? That
Speaker 3
was really critical. Like I said, we used to edit bond for the Fieldhouse and parks uses a bond for their their administrative spaces. And we were really fortunate to have over $4 million in private and private and organizational donations. But that ready grant of 6 million allowed us to do something to to build some spaces that the community had really been excited about. We have a full fledged teaching kitchen, we have a fitness center. And we also have what we're calling a child watch area, which in all the benchmarking we did it was what we understood is that parents and grandparents really wanted a safe place for their children to be for a couple hours while they went to the physician while they went to do the fitness while they walked the walk to the facility while they went to watch somebody practice or play. And so having that available is something we're really excited about.
Speaker 1
Let's move on to a big event about a week from now. Actually, it's only about five days. That's right. Since this series on a Wednesday, we're here on a Tuesday, but it's getting here really close. And that's the solar Total Eclipse. Of course, barring some severe weather or weather phenomenon that would prevent that from happening. It's going to happen no matter what. And about a month ago we talked about the planning they were doing. I mean porta potties from Northern Indiana, right. What more have you found that you had to prepare for?
Speaker 3
Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna preface this by saying I had. I had lunch with Mayor Thompson from Bloomington yesterday. So we were kind of comparing stories. And I think both of us both cities have been preparing for this for over a year. And we're getting to the place now where we're really just finally getting all of our security measures in place. Doing the final marketing blitz to make sure that we have people who understand that, you know, we've got a lot going on in Columbus, and we'd love to have you here for the Eclipse. So now we're just all watching the weather.
Speaker 1
Yeah, a lot can happen right. Between now and Monday. What would you advise, I guess, two groups of people, the residents of Columbus for them to do on that day, but also tourists were coming into town, where should they go? Right?
Speaker 3
Great question. So we have lots of cities website, the Columbus area visitors website, all of our Facebook pages. And I know people will be able to find those will give you lots of information on places that you can stay, though, I think by now, many places have been booked. But they'll also give you information on events that we have. And then, you know, potential traffic options for local residents, we've been encouraging them to understand that our traffic will really increase. And so we want them to enjoy all the events we have going on Friday night, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. We have a big renaissance fair up at our airport. But we really want them to, if possible, not get out in the traffic, if they can walk or ride their bike, we'd really appreciate that just to reduce the amount of traffic that we have. And we're also have been telling them to do your grocery shopping early, you know, by the end of this week, go to whatever store that you go to get what you're going to need for the next three or four days, fill up your gas tank in your vehicle. Make sure that you have the medicine that you need. Because we feel like Sunday and Monday and maybe early into Tuesday, traffic is just going to be a little crazy around here. I
Speaker 1
also heard you I don't know what the terminology is. But you added a police chief.
Speaker 3
We did. Our our former police chief, Mike Richardson just recently announced his retirement as of the spring. And so we were in the process of we've spent the past couple of months going through the process of hiring a new police chief, which I announced about a month ago and this morning he was sworn in. Officially His name is Steve Norman. And he he's been with the city I believe for close to 30 years long term, longtime police officer with amazing credentials. So I was really thrilled to be able to appoint him. And then he appointed Matt Martindale as his deputy chief. So both of those were sworn in. And he announced kind of his new executive team in the past week or so. So you know, we're full speed ahead. The The best part is that the former Chief Mike Richardson is taking off some well needed time for a couple months. And then he will return to city employment in June. And he will be the director of security and risk, which is a new position that we created in 2024. It's not a law enforcement position, but his job is to help us. You know, analyze and assess all of our buildings, where our employees work, where the public comes looking for security issues, seeing how we can manage risk better how we need to harden our buildings, and then help with the training both with city employees as well as the public. Because unfortunately, across the nation, we're seeing more and more incidents were very concerning. And we want to make sure that we're more prepared.
Speaker 1
We have a couple of minutes left, but I did want to get to a housing study or housing meeting conference. However you want to say it you that you had recently. And of course this is always have it's an issue in every city that we talk to every mayor about. But I guess it starts with these types of conversations. Right?
Speaker 3
Correct. And I think we spoke about that last month when you were here. We like it really the community, as you said, is is carefully assessing the amount of housing we have as well as the type that we have. And so the first of 2024, we started the process of a housing study, we hired a firm, in fact, the same firm that did a recent housing study both in Bloomington and up in the Lafayette area. And so they've already spent a couple of months analyzing data. And we had a housing session for the public about two weeks ago, had a great turnout, several 100 people were there, really appreciated the feedback that we got. And our housing consultant was able to meet with a lot of different members of the community, what we call them stakeholder groups, right representatives of areas of people that we knew, had housing concerns. And so there'll be back over the next couple of months. And we hope to by mid summer by July to have started having some reports back. And so that that what we get the information that we get is going to be really helpful as we as a city try to decide how we allocate resources, how we worked to develop with developers to get those tax credits they need, how can we use TIF dollars more effectively, and, and then help help us locate areas and properties that might be a really good fit for a certain type of housing. So we've got a lot of interesting interested developers Now, so I'm really I'm really hopeful that we'll be able to figure out what we need and move forward in the next year. And we just lost our lights did me is
Unknown Speaker
there. Can I run? Switch somewhere?
Speaker 3
I don't know that there's a switch? I don't know. Oh, oh, there it is. It's it's movement. I was gonna say, is it stormy outside? Okay. Is there any place that you need me to pick up? Where were we talking about housing? Housing?
Unknown Speaker
For the audio the audience, okay.
Speaker 3
Yeah, no, I don't care about the if, if you're showing it and it goes blank. I don't care a little bit. Yeah. If
Speaker 1
you can tuck that. Yeah, there we go again. Yeah, and just driving in today, I see where the new development just a couple blocks from City Hall looks the
Speaker 3
Taylor the Taylor right is finished. Yeah, it's completed. And people have, I believe residents have moved in as early as late 2023. And so their numbers are increasing. So again, it's really exciting because a lot of the people now living there actually moved back into the city of Columbus who had been looking for housing. So that's a real benefit.
Speaker 1
So we just about one minute left, that was like to leave it to you, any announcements, any things that we need to know,
Speaker 3
you know, I'm just gonna reinforce the solar eclipse information. Since we've been pushing that for so long. It's, we're, we're excited that we're part of the totality. And we want to make sure that people feel very welcome here. We've got a lot of events going on. And the residents are very pleased to be able to open sometimes even their homes and their property. So we welcome people to Columbus, we just want you to make sure that you understand that if you come here or any place in the totality that there will be some traffic delays. So just be very patient bring what you need to get through sitting in a vehicle for a couple of hours. So
Unknown Speaker
thank you, and I guess we'll see you next month.
Unknown Speaker
That's right. That's right.
Unknown Speaker
Actually, I think next month is May.
Unknown Speaker
It is May,
Speaker 1
you know, and that is during the primary. Okay, so I think we'll skip what we're gonna have to skip because that's gonna be it'll be closed on Tuesday, right? Primary day. That's right. See you in June. Okay, we'll catch up then. Thank you so much. Perfect. Yep.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you. Now I'll give you a tour. Yeah.
