Emails Suggest Connection Between Nationwide Arena Deal, Crew Land Purchase

At the end of the last year, local officials struck two deals with Nationwide Realty Investors (NRI), to retire debt associated with the 2012 purchase of Nationwide Arena. The original deal was built on casino tax revenues that never materialized. The new ones rely on diverted property taxes and hotel revenue. 

Emails obtained by WOSU through a public records request suggest there was a connection between the latest Nationwide Arena deal and Columbus Crew’s new stadium.

Last summer, weeks after plans were announced to build a downtown stadium for the newly saved the Crew, the project went quiet. Negotiations over a key parcel of Arena District land stalled.

That land was owned by Nationwide Realty Investors. Some in city hall clearly saw a link between that stadium deal and a new effort to refinance Nationwide Arena.

The Nationwide Arena Sale

To get a handle on this, let’s go back to 2012. The tax-payer funded Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority purchased Nationwide Arena for more than $44 million.

It was a controversial move after voters rejected a half cent sales tax increase in 1997 to pay for an arena. But then-Auditor Hugh Dorrian insisted one thing above all else that  local tax revenue won’t be used for the arena.

“Let’s say as long as I’m alive I’d strenuously object to such an option,” Dorrian said at the time. “That is not an option under the current agreement.”

Apparently times change. I caught up with Dorrian and he didn’t want to be interviewed for this story. But he said since he wasn’t party to the new agreement he didn’t want to “condemn” the deal, and if it was good enough for his successor, it’s good enough for him.

Dorrian’s successor is Megan Kilgore. She took over as Auditor in 2018, and she worked in Dorrian’s office when the city and county bought the arena, and says the deal has been fraught from day one. 

“I can’t remember a time in my tenure here at the city and even in the private sector wherein there were not discussions about nationwide arena, and it’s capability and it’s solvency basically,” Kilgore says.

Kilgore explains the casino revenues meant to pay down the $44 million arena, have never come close to the initial projections. NRI has never received a payment for the facility, and the interest on that debt has only grown. By the end of 2019, the total was more than $64 million.

Although the terms of the initial deal place the risk of default on NRI, Kilgore worries the city and county might be called upon in the future if nothing was done.

“The city and the county routinely had been called to the table to help right that ship,” Kilgore says. “And so an honest fear of mine was at some point if the city and the county and others were to do nothing what would the city be called to do in future years?”

The Crew Stadium Connection

In an email from last July obtained through public records request, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther’s chief of staff Kenneth Paul hinted at a quid pro quo, connecting a new arena deal to the stadium land sale.

He wrote “Crew needs certainty as to closing of city transactions with NRI in order to stay on track” for stadium construction. And later about the city deal tied to the arena “our belief is that NRI may not accommodate if they do not have passage.”

At another point in the email, he wrote deals between NRI and the city or the convention facilities authority must be completed as a condition of closing the deal to acquire land for the stadium.

NRI’s principal, Vice President Brian Ellis, declined to comment when asked about a connection between the deals.

The mayor's chief of staff now says he was mistaken, noting at the time he believed city legislation was “critical for virtually all of the projects in the Arena District, including the stadium site.” He goes on to say that in fact, the arena financing deal wasn’t completed until months after the stadium sale concluded.

Auditor Kilgore rejects a connection as well.

“I think there’s a great misnomer that the conversation about Nationwide Arena only emerged as part of Confluence Park and the new Crew (stadium). It’s absolutely false,” Kilgore says.

What’s In The Deals?

NRI’s deal with the city restructures what are known as TIFs, which are districts where property taxes are diverted to a special fund, typically to reimburse public infrastructure investment. The twist is that NRI can claim up to $65 million from that fund to pay for the arena. In effect, the company gets a rebate on its future property taxes in the arena district.

Chris Connelly, a public finance attorney with the Taft law firm, says that’s unusual but completely legal.

“This strikes me as a creative, legally sound, solution to a problem that was just going to get worse,” He says. “It’s certainly not the norm in the TIF world, but the TIF laws are flexible enough to allow you to do things like this.”

Separately, Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority President Don Brown says his organization agreed to make a lump sum payment of $51.5 million to NRI in 2029.

“We struck a deal and the terms of that deal allow us to basically settle the loan for 50 cents on the dollar or there abouts,” Brown explains.

That still doesn’t sit well with Bret Adams, a local attorney and critic of the Nationwide Arena agreement.

“That wasn’t the deal,” he says. “They were supposed to be paid back with casino revenues they took that risk and they took that risk that that loan could be in default and it’s not fair to leverage the Crew Stadium and that’s exactly what they did in order to get that money back.”

And the TIF restructuring wasn’t without controversy on city council. Council president Shannon Hardin prepared an op-ed that was never published defending his vote saying, “the Columbus of 2040 shouldn’t be saddled by unpaid debts of our forefathers.”

President Pro Tem Elizabeth Brown was one of three to vote against the measure.

“TIFs are supposed to use tax dollars generated from an area to improve that area and increase economic development, and I did not think that that deal met that standard,” Brown says.

Shayla Favor and Rob Dorans also voted no. All three are fresh off an election campaign in which their challengers relentlessly attacked the city’s use of tax incentives. Brown says that race had nothing to do with her vote.

Between the city and convention facilities authority, NRI could collect more than $116 million over the life of the deals.

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