Council Approves WestBend TIF for 895 West Side Apartments
Members voted 8-0 on consent Monday to set up tax financing and a community authority for Thrive's nearly $200 million plan on the old Buckeye Auto Parts site. Status: Approved, awaiting signatures.
The public financing package behind WestBend, a plan for about 895 apartments on a riverside brownfield on the West Side, won final approval from council on Monday night, October 26. Ordinances 2895-2026 and 2896-2026 passed on the consent agenda 8-0, with Councilmember Rob Dorans absent, per the meeting record. The same vote adopted resolution 0239X-2026, which forms the WestBend Community Authority.
The developer is WestBend QOZB, LLC, an affiliate of Thrive Companies. According to the ordinances, it controls about 50.28 acres that once held Buckeye Auto Parts, on three of the four corners where Fisher Road meets McKinley Avenue, with the Scioto River along its east edge and the old New York Central rail line along its west edge. The company expects to spend nearly $200 million in three phases on the apartments, some of them affordable units, plus as much as 8,000 square feet of shops and surface parking.
Ordinance 2895 creates a tax increment financing district over seven parcels. For up to 30 years per phase, new value from construction would be exempt from property tax, and owners would instead make service payments in the same amounts. Columbus City Schools would still receive what it would have collected in taxes. The rest goes into a WestBend fund for public improvements, and the city says it gives up all of the property tax revenue it would otherwise have received from the new construction.
Ordinance 2896 spends that fund. It lets the Development Department sign an agreement with the developer and the new community authority to repay bonds the authority issues for infrastructure, and it lets Columbus Water & Power sign a separate deal on running and maintaining the site's water mains and its sanitary and storm sewers. The list of eligible work attached to the TIF covers stormwater and flood remediation, demolition, environmental cleanup, land and easements, public art and design services.
Both measures carried emergency clauses. The city's stated reason was timing: the developer's lender wanted the apartment financing closed before October ends and would not close until the TIF and agreements existed, and a delay risked pushing the project past deadlines in its economic development agreement. That agreement dates to April 19, 2024, under Ordinance 1866-2023, and was amended on August 19, 2026. A blight study the city accepted found the parcels qualify for a residential TIF under state law.
Still missing from the legislation: a construction start, rents, the count of affordable units and any tenant for the retail space. As of Wednesday morning, Legistar still showed all three items routed to the council office for signature, and we will add the closing or a groundbreaking date when one is public.
For neighbors, the decision opens the door to hundreds of new households on a riverfront brownfield the city has classed as blighted, with new roads and sewers built to serve them. For another riverside project in the area, read about the Green|House opening at Gravity in Franklinton, see the West Side page for food and drink nearby, and follow construction news in Real Estate.
