Some retail business owners at NexusPark are frustrated, and it spilled out into the open on Tuesday night.
During Columbus City Council meetings, members of the public are able to fill out forms to speak on a topic of their choosing for three to four minutes. After 30 minutes of a rather typical council meeting Tuesday night, Mark Hajduk, a co-owner of the Mother Bear’s Pizza location in NexusPark, came up to give voice to ongoing concerns he and other retail businesses in the spaces at NexusPark have, he said.
The joint venture between the city of Columbus and Columbus Regional Health to transform the former FairOaks Mall into a health, wellness and recreation center saw most of the spaces come online in 2024— CRH and parks offices, and the Circle K Fieldhouse. City officials recently celebrated the opening of the Midtown Green space out front just last month. That was the culmination of a seven-year process after the FairOaks Mall was purchased by the city, CRH and Heritage Fund in 2018.
But it’s been a bit of sluggish start at NexusPark, with revenue falling short of expectations, general issues with parking and business challenges at CRH. City officials stress that there’s a three- to five-year operational ramp up for NexusPark so things may take some time.
There’s been an exodus of a couple of prominent parks employees in the past couple months as well: the departure of Pam Harrell, the former associate director of business services, who retired, as well as longtime parks director Mark Jones, who is leaving the role in just under a month.
“I’m here tonight on behalf of myself and several small business owners at NexusPark,” Hajduk said. “We have a number of concerns to raise about our operations at NexusPark. We bring these to you in the interest of creating a dialogue and forming a partnership where all parties can succeed.”
Hajduk noted that Council President Frank Miller, R-District 4, who is also the city council’s liaison to the six-member NexusPark Community Development Corporation (NPCDC), told him the council may not be the best venue for addressing these concerns. Regardless, Hajduk said “we’ve got our three to four minutes— we’re going to use them.”
Hajduk mentioned a primary concern as the lack of retail tenant representation on the NPCDC, along with the state of event booking at the Circle K Fieldhouse, parking capacity and unoccupied retail spaces at NexusPark.
Veritas Realty is the leasing agent for the retail spaces at NexusPark, and Hajduk said when he brought these issues to Veritas, he was told “to engage with the government because they didn’t know what to do.”
Booking at the fieldhouse in non-peak months from April to September “is non-existent,” Hajduk told council members. From October to March of last year, they did see a “significant increase in sales” when there were more events going on, according to Hajduk, but “there has been some concern about some of the businesses being able to actually sustain and stay open if the non-peak hours continue to have the amount of programming that’s happening at the fieldhouse.”
Mother Bear’s opened last September, after some delays due to an array of challenges, ranging from negotiating with utilities and moving walls around to having to dig the floor up and install piping.
Hajduk indicated they were promised a certain amount of foot traffic, with upwards of 6,000 people per week, most of which would be on weekends. Even that if that were true, Hajduk said, it would still leave a limited amount of parking.
With the addition of two new retail spaces redevelopment agreed to build out in May, there will be 19 at NexusPark. There are 13 tenant spaces leased and under contract and just one vacant, but Veritas is in the process of filling three other spaces, Jones told The Republic at the time, and Mayor Mary Ferdon confirmed Wednesday.
“Another was the promise of foot traffic being funnelled through the retail spaces,” Hajduk said. “There were promises made to have some of the doors at Parks and Rec not be open so that everybody who would come and attend events at the fieldhouse would walk by our businesses. That’s clearly not happening.”
“Also with the unoccupied spaces, what it creates is a pretty dismal and uninviting viewpoint from anybody walking into the fieldhouse,” Hajduk continued.
Even Lucas Bros Burgers— a Columbus staple— resorted to pleading on social media for support from the community.
“We have struggled in our current location and have seen a large trending reduction in sales,” a July 14 Facebook post read. “The tournaments that were supposed to be scheduled and bring traffic have been cancelled for several months now.”
A week later, Lucas Bros extended thanks for the additional business they received after the post, noting a “huge increase in traffic last week,” saying, “It made a huge difference in our small business.”
Hajduk left on Tuesday saying: “We kind of pick and chose what we were going to address tonight, but mainly we’re here to ask: who’s advocating for us? Where’s our voice? Where’s our venue? We understand the city and CRH invested millions of dollars in NexusPark. With all due respect, we invested millions of dollars in this community, in this facility as well.”
The mayor told The Republic Wednesday afternoon that she was unaware retail tenants were unhappy to that extent, and was apologetic that tenants felt as though they had no choice but to voice their displeasure publicly.
“I’m really sorry that the tenants didn’t know where they could go with their concerns. We have a leasing agent— Veritas — and then the NPCDC, which oversees the tenants…. I regret that they didn’t feel that they had a different place to go,” Ferdon said.
Moving forward, Ferdon said Eric Frey, her executive director of administration, and Associate Director of Parks Nikki Murphy will reach out to tenants this week in hopes of working through some of their concerns.
She said as well that they hope to have better lines of communication with retail tenants moving forward.
“We knew we wouldn’t have all the tournaments and usage in place for the first couple of years,” according to the mayor. “And so I think that’s probably one of the disappointments that they were expressing last night.”
Ferdon said there were a couple leagues and tournaments that were canceled in recent months and that they hoped for more usage in the fieldhouse, but attributed some of that to the transitional period to get NexusPark off the ground.
When asked if there could’ve been more advanced booking of events to ensure there wouldn’t be down periods during the ramp up period, Ferdon said they did start booking in the fall of 2023 but wanted to be careful to not book too much on the chance of any delays.
“There was a balancing act to booking events and tournaments in such a way that we made sure we were open and could accommodate them,” Ferdon said.
Ferdon said there was a desire to bring in sports revenue dollars through things like regional tournaments, but also wanted to have space for use by local residents and teams. Now that parks has an idea how much IU Columbus, for example, will use the fieldhouse “we feel more comfortable going out and saying local groups aren’t going to use it at this time, so we need backfill.”
“What we didn’t want to do was book it solidly for out of town groups and events and not be able to accommodate the people that live here,” Ferdon said.
“We’re not always going to get it right, and I’m going to apologize for that, and then try to learn and make sure in the future that we do what is best for the community,” Ferdon continued. “So we’ll get there— it’s just going to take a little while.”
The mayor did say she spoke with Mother Bear’s co-owner Ray McConn Wednesday to talk through some of their concerns. Hajduk did not return additional questions asked by The Republic by press time.