Redevelopment commission empties old downtown garage fund

The Columbus Redevelopment Commission is cleaning out an old fund that was used to pay for the downtown Cummins parking garage.

In 2011, the city created two Certified Technology Parks to pay for $11 million dollars in bonds to fund the downtown parking garage. Each technology park was limited by the state at only raising $5 million dollars over its life.

The increase in payroll and sales taxes over the previous baseline in the park areas were scooped up by the technology parks and used to repay the bonds that paid for the garage. But the increase in Cummins and other employment in the technology parks meant that the bonds were fully repaid within four years, says Stan Gamso, attorney for the redevelopment commission. The fund that was created to store the incoming money has been dormant since 2014 and still had almost $1.2 million dollars left in it.

After some consultation with state officials, the redevelopment commission agreed at a special meeting Thursday to take those funds and put them in the redevelopment commission accounts.