Columbus Approves TIF and Authority for Thrive's WestBend Project

Columbus City Council on October 26, 2026 approved a package of three emergency measures that create a tax-increment financing district and a new community authority to help finance Thrive Companies' WestBend project, a roughly 50.28-acre former brownfield at Fisher Road and McKinley Avenue slated for about 895 apartments.

What the council approved

The council acted on three linked items for the west-side development. It passed Ordinance 2895-2026 to create the WestBend TIF, Ordinance 2896-2026 to authorize the financing agreements, and Resolution 0239X-2026 to establish the WestBend Community Authority. The city's legislative record shows the council adopted all three on October 26, 2026 on its consent agenda, each with an emergency clause that let it take effect at once. The record states that each measure carried but does not show how individual members voted. The vote was the latest step in a plan the city first backed in an economic development agreement dated April 19, 2024 under Ordinance 1866-2023, later amended in 2026.

How the tax district works

A tax-increment financing district, or TIF, redirects the taxes on new construction to pay for public works at the site instead of sending that money to the usual governments. Under the ordinance, improvements on the WestBend parcels are exempt from real property tax by 100 percent for up to 30 years, across the development's three phases.

Columbus City Schools are held harmless: the ordinance requires that the schools still receive everything they would have collected had the exemption not applied. In place of taxes, the property owners make service payments, and the non-school share of those payments flows into a city fund dedicated to public infrastructure improvements at the site, such as stormwater work, demolition, environmental remediation and land acquisition.

A new authority and its bonds

The WestBend Community Authority is a special governmental body created under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 349 to support the project. The appropriation ordinance authorizes the city to sign a financing and cooperative agreement among the city, the authority and the developer so that the service payments reimburse development revenue bonds the authority issues for public infrastructure, and a separate utility agreement covers the long-term operation of water, sanitary sewer and storm sewer lines. A petition to organize the authority reached the city clerk on August 28, 2026, and the council held a public hearing on it on September 29, 2026 before approving it.

Inside the WestBend project

The developer, WestBend QOZB, LLC, is an affiliate of Thrive Companies. Its site covers about 50.28 acres at the southwest, southeast and northeast corners of Fisher Road and McKinley Avenue, between the New York Central Railroad and the Scioto River. The ordinances describe nearly $200 million in private investment to build roughly 895 apartments, including affordable units, with up to 8,000 square feet of retail and surface parking across three phases.

City records call the land a former Buckeye Auto Parts brownfield, and NBC4 has reported that the lot was a former quarry and landfill that later held an auto salvage yard and required environmental cleanup through the Ohio EPA Voluntary Action Plan. Earlier concept plans reported in 2022 showed about 900 apartments, a 12-acre park and a 40,000-square-foot office building, and a 2025 account cited 463 apartments, so the exact program has shifted over time.

What the ordinances leave open

The measures set up the financing but leave key details unstated. The ordinances do not name a dollar limit on the authority's bonds, break the roughly 895 apartments into phases, count the affordable units or set a construction schedule. The council justified the emergency by citing the developer's lender, which it said required the apartment financing to close before the end of the month and would not close until the city established the district and the authority. The next checkpoint is that financing close and the follow-up appropriation legislation the Department of Development said it would bring back to authorize spending from the district's fund.