The city of Columbus is being accused of mounting a pressure campaign on downtown property owners to move control of safety and cleaning services to an organization Mayor Andrew Ginther has influence over.
Marc Conte, executive director of the Capital Crossroads District, told WOSU Michael Stevens, director of Ginther's Dept. of Development, pressured owners to pull their support. Conte is set to lose his job on Nov. 1 once the two downtown special improvement districts, or SIDs, shut down because property owners pulled their support.
"We had a couple of them say, 'Look, if I want to keep doing business with a city and doing business with downtown Columbus, Inc., I got to do what they say,'" Conte said.
The downtown SIDs focus on cleanliness and safety services and do homeless outreach in the area.
The SIDs are funded by a voluntary tax on property owners approved by 60% of owners within an established boundary.
Downtown Columbus Inc. is taking over the Capital Crossroads SID and Discovery District SID under its Safer Downtown program. These districts are funded by property owners who voluntarily tax themselves to pay for safety and cleanliness efforts.
Conte said Ginther will have more control of operations in downtown Columbus, which he says may be the intent of the move. Conte criticized Downtown Columbus Inc., saying it doesn't know the downtown area, and importantly the area's homeless population, as well as his decades-old organization.
"In the DCI board, not all of them own property downtown. Not all of them work downtown or live downtown. So you have a lot of people on their board who, unless they're coming for a special event or something, probably never come downtown," Conte said.
Conte said the city was threatening not to do business with some of these property owners.
Stevens said Conte's allegations are "disappointing," but said he did talk to larger property owners about pulling their support.
"[I] explained what the city wanted to do. We wanted to expand clean and safe and not shrink clean and safe services," Stevens said.
Stevens stated the city wanted to consolidate the services the SIDs provide under Downtown Columbus Inc., which he said is redundant to what the SIDs did.
Stevens said that instead of working with the city to expand cleanliness and safety efforts, the SID tried to reduce its boundaries because it lost support.
"They decided to just go ahead and work to maintain the status quo and couldn't get the property owners in the current SID boundaries to reauthorize because the property owners knew what [the city] was trying to accomplish," Stevens said.
Stevens said the SID's plan didn't make sense.
Stevens alleged the SID leadership, including Conte, wanted to "maintain control."
Stevens said this wasn't about putting the services under control of an agency more closely aligned to the mayor's office.
"It never was about the Downtown Columbus Inc.'s board directing that work," Stevens said.
Robin Davis, who will head up Downtown Columbus Inc.'s "Safer Downtown" initiative, said she was not aware of any efforts by the city to pressure property owners. Davis is a previous employee of Mayor Ginther's office.
"What I can say is that in the last several months, as I've been having conversations with property owners, none of them have have said anything along the lines of what Marc's saying," Davis said. "What they do say is we want a clean, safe and vibrant downtown and if that's what you can provide us, then we're in."
Davis described the negotiations and conversations with the SIDs over the past year as "very heated."
"It was very emotional. And I understand why the folks who had been running SIDS services were very invested in what they did," Davis said.
The accusations follow months of conflict over the SIDs future since May 2024. This ultimately ended when the SIDs could not put together 60% support among property owners to reestablish itself for another five years in February.
The city plans to fund the downtown ambassadors and homeless population outreach through 2026 after the SIDs shut down. After that, the city plans to circulate a new petition to reestablish the SIDs under Downtown Columbus Inc.'s control.
"Basically since, probably since April when property owners started pulling their petitions at the behest of the city, that almost every decision our board has made since then has been under duress because they've really been left with no choice," Conte said.
Conte said the SIDs went an extra step with programs like the Pearl Alley Market, public art installations and other "placemaking efforts."
Conte said the Pearl Market ended last week after Downtown Columbus Inc. expressed no interest in continuing it.
The SIDs also got the downtown transit pass program, known as "C-Pass," established with the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA). COTA will make a decision on the future of the C-Pass program.
Conte said the SIDs were never given a good answer as to why the operations would be better under Downtown Columbus Inc. other than it would be "more efficient."
Conte said there are good reasons why the SIDs are separate from Downtown Columbus Inc., which is a development centered nonprofit. Conte pointed out the nonprofit competes with downtown property owners the SIDs seek to represent.
"They facilitate and continue to facilitate new office development on the Peninsula, for example," Conte said. "And several tenants have moved to the Peninsula from Capital Square. So some of my own office building owners really had deep concerns about not giving money to what they see as a competitor in terms of a leasing environment."
Conte agreed that theoretically nothing with change, but over time he will be highly surprised if Downtown Columbus Inc. keeps the same approach his team did. He said it took the SIDs a particularly long time to build trust with social service agencies who were concerned that we were just gonna push homeless people out of downtown.
"Then we finally established really good trust... and I know that's the intention of DCI, but again, I'm skeptical that they will be successful in that," Conte said.
Conte criticized the Safer Downtown campaign, saying the name itself already signals to people that downtown isn't safe right now.
Davis said she believes downtown Columbus is safe, but struggles with property crime. She said this is what Downtown Columbus Inc. hopes to address.
Davis said Downtown Columbus Inc. is contracting with the same business that does the SID's ambassador program. She said they are hiring two former homeless outreach employees of the SIDs and hiring two more people with Mount Carmel Health to help.
"The people that neighbors and residents and property owners may be used to seeing, they're gonna be the same people," Davis said.
Davis said Downtown Columbus Inc. also wants to fill gaps of the downtown area that are not served by the SIDs. She pointed to the riverfront and the Peninsula area.
"We will only do it if it makes financial sense to us. Certainly they need some of the same services, especially homelessness outreach and they need clean and safe services as well," Davis said.
Davis and Downtown Columbus Inc. expect the transition in services to be "seamless."
Stevens said the conversations are frustrating, but he thinks the situation has been resolved with property owners.
"I am really encouraged because when I talk with property owners, they don't care about the who as much as the what and the how," Stevens said. "They're really focused on if we're going to deliver on the services."
