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Council Considers Legislation To Rehab Old Trolley Barns

columbuscompact.com
One of the old trolley buildings

The future of six dilapidated trolley barns near Franklin Park takes a step forward tonight, when Columbus City Council votes on legislation that would help fund their rehabilitation. 

Jim Letizia reports.

The legislation authorizes a 143-thousand dollar Green Columbus grant for the owner of the 3-acre site at the corner of Oak Street and Kelton Avenue that is home to six deteriorating brick buildings once used to store and repair trolleys. Local real estate broker Brad DeHays and Trolley Barn LLC must use the money for Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessments and an asbestos survey. Though DeHays, who also runs Rehab Tavern in Franklinton and is working with the city on an affordable housing project downtown, has not said officially what he plans to do with the site, the legislation says the grant will enable the site to be redeveloped for mixed use, which may involve retail, restaurant and residential facilities. The Franklin Park Civic Association has said a mixed-use development seems to be the only economically feasible option.  In 2010, theColumbus Compact Corporation invited residents and interested parties near the barn to weigh in on what types of uses they would like to see. Ideas varied from turning the barns into a museum and botanical gardens, to a day care center, a café center and spaces for artists.  The six brick buildings at the trolley-barn site were constructed between 1880 and 1920. Peter Merkle, the broker for DeHays, has said DeHays wants to try and preserve the trolley buildings and incorporate them into the project. DeHays bought the site earlier this year  for 337 thousand dollars from Minnie McGee after many years of legal wrangling and neighborhood complaints about the condition of the structures. McGee, an assistant dean at Ohio State University's College of Engineering, bought the property at a Sheriff's sale in 2003 for 231 thousand dollars. In 2005, the city of Columbus began citing McGee for code violations. Last September she agreed to sell. The city says had she not agreed to do so, she would have faced foreclosure. City officials and neighbors have called the site a  magnet for drug deals, prostitution and other crimes. Neighbors have complained of falling bricks and roof slates that flow into their homes and yards, as well as collapsing roof trusses and window panels

Jim has been with WCBE since 1996. Before that he worked as a reporter at another Columbus radio station, and for three newspapers in Southwest Florida.
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