This is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the Boundless apartment proposal in the June 25 meeting recap, alongside an explainer on the traffic study and a roundup of what residents told the Planning Commission.
At the center of the June 25 hearing is a single request. Elford Development, represented by the law firm Underhill & Hodge and working with the nonprofit I Am Boundless, wants the city to rezone a 20.4-acre eastern portion of the roughly 41-acre Boundless campus (the former Harding Hospital site off East Dublin-Granville Road) from its current S-1 designation to a Planned Unit Development, or PUD. The rezoning would clear the way for 246 apartments plus two single-family lots. The Planning Commission recommended approval 4-1, and City Council has the final say on July 20. Here is what the plan actually contains, drawn from the city staff report and the city's project page.
What's being proposed
The plan divides the rezoning area into two parts. The larger one, about 20 acres on the eastern side of the campus, also takes in the protected Rush Run ravine and would hold the 246 apartments. The second is a pair of single-family lots fronting Park Overlook Drive that would be sold and built separately later. Counting both, the city calculates a density of 12.2 units per acre across the 20.4 acres.
The apartments themselves run a mix of sizes, roughly 60% one-bedroom, 30% two-bedroom, and 10% three-bedroom, according to the city's project page. They are spread across several building types:
- Two two-story buildings at the southern end, nearest the Colonial Hills homes.
- Three-story buildings to the north, set farther back.
- Five two-story carriage houses along the western edge.
- A clubhouse and pool amenity area.
Plans call for 325 parking spaces across the site, according to the staff report.
One number recurs throughout the debate, and it comes straight from the staff report: of the roughly 20 acres, only about 11.2 acres would actually be disturbed by construction. The rest is the Rush Run corridor, which cannot be built on. That is why opponents argue the apartments are effectively packed onto half the site.
Jobs, workforce housing, and a tax abatement
The proposal is also an economic-development deal, and that is where its financing comes in. Boundless is one of Worthington's larger employers, and the land sale would help fund continued renovation of its campus and an expansion of its programs and services. The applicant says that work would create and retain jobs, including an estimated 65 to 80 new positions tied to new and expanded programming.
In return, at least 74 of the 246 units would be set aside as workforce housing: rented at rates affordable to households earning 80% of the area median income (currently about $62,450 a year for a one-person household in the Columbus region) and kept that way for at least 10 years. The affordable units would be a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments scattered across the development rather than concentrated in a single building.
The incentive behind that commitment is a tax abatement through the city's Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) Workforce Housing Abatement program. It comes with conditions. To receive any abatement, Boundless and Elford must maintain a minimum payroll of $5 million, report the Boundless payroll to the city each year, and, on Elford's side, show that the workforce units stay affordable across the site. A Tax Incentive Review Council reviews compliance every year and makes a recommendation to City Council, which can terminate or shorten the abatement if the workforce-housing terms aren't met. (The city describes the program on its economic-development site.)
Stay connected to what's happening in Worthington, Ohio.
Access stays emergency-only
The only way in and out for cars would be a new roundabout off the Proprietors Road leg of SR-161, on the north side of the main Boundless building, feeding a private internal drive east to the apartments. The two connections to Colonial Hills, Park Overlook Drive and Indianola Avenue, would stay closed to everything but emergency vehicles, blocked by removable bollards and landscaping. That restriction would be written into the binding PUD development text, which city planners say makes the long-standing closure more durable than today's informal arrangement.
For people on foot and on bikes, the plan adds an 11-foot public shared-use path running from Park Overlook Drive, across from Indianola Avenue, up through the site to the existing drive out to East Dublin-Granville Road. The city says the connection advances its Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan.
Protecting Rush Run, and a fee the developer wants waived
The applicant commits to acquiring and permanently preserving the Rush Run ravine as a "no disturbance" zone. As for trees, the plan removes 135 trees, most of them already in poor or dead condition according to the report, and replaces them with 275 new ones.
Where trees can't be replaced one-for-one, the city's code charges a tree-replacement fee of $150 per missing caliper inch, which here works out to roughly $75,600. Elford is asking the city to waive that fee, pointing to the cost of buying and preserving the Rush Run corridor and building the public path. Separately, the project would pay the standard $62,000 into the city's Parks Fund, at $250 for each of the 248 dwelling units.
What changed since January
Much of the applicant's case rests on revisions made since the plan was first heard in January. The roof pitch was lowered from a steep 12:12 to 6:12 to reduce the buildings' apparent height. An earlier stone base gave way to a red-brown brick blend with white clapboard and gray Dutch-lap siding. And the southernmost building was stepped down to two stories and shifted to ease the transition to the neighborhood. By the staff report's measurements, the nearest two-story building would sit roughly 170 feet from the closest home on Park Overlook Drive, and the nearest three-story building about 330 feet away. The applicant says its team has held more than seven neighborhood meetings over the past year.
Why staff backed it
City planning staff recommended approval, and their reasoning tracks the city's own long-range plans. Redevelopment of this part of the Boundless campus was anticipated in the Northeast Area Plan, which lists residential as an acceptable use south of Rush Run and expects the ravine to be preserved. Staff also pointed to the 74 workforce-housing units, the formalized emergency-only access, and the new path. And they noted the land sale itself matters to Boundless: the proceeds would fund the campus renovation and job growth described above, and support future office or commercial development along the East Dublin-Granville Road frontage.
The city engineer's office, reviewing the traffic study, concluded the apartments would have a "negligible impact" on the SR-161 and Proprietors intersection and that no public road improvements would be required. See links below for more detail on the traffic study.
What's next
If City Council approves the rezoning on July 20, the plan still returns to the Planning Commission for final-plan approval. That stage settles landscaping, lighting, and stormwater details, decides the tree-fee waiver request, and resolves a flagged issue where one building edge currently extends into a city waterline easement.
This is one of three Worthington Pulse stories on the Boundless proposal. Read the others: The Boundless Traffic Study, Explained and What Residents Told the Planning Commission. Or start with the June 25 meeting recap.