Two significant projects got key approvals this week from the Italian Village Commission – one in the Jeffrey Park development and the other in a new development called The Lusso.
In Jeffrey Park, a plan to build a five-story, 178-unit apartment building and parking garage near the I-670 off-ramp will be moving forward after the board approved the overall footprint of the proposal (it will need to return for a final sign-off on design details and landscaping).
A five-story, 90,000-square-foot office building is also part of those plans, although the developer – Thrive Companies – has said that that portion of the development will be built after the apartments and the 490-space parking garage.
Plans for the southern end of Jeffrey Park have gone through several iterations. In 2019, a large parking garage topped by as much as 140,000 square feet of office space – and perhaps several floors of apartments – was proposed, but that was replaced earlier this year with a shorter project that prioritized building the residential portion first.
Responding to feedback provided by the commission in January, the latest plans calls for a more open, publicly-accessible courtyard and more separation between the apartments and the future office building. A redesigned amenity deck will provide views of Downtown for office workers and residents of the apartments.
Commissioners were generally happy with the changes, but several stressed that they want to see murals or another type of creative screening for the large parking garage that will be visible from the highway.
The Lusso development will eventually fill in about 8 acres of mostly undeveloped land on the Grave Vault site south of Fifth Avenue.
The first phase of the project will include three new buildings between Detroit Avenue and Third Avenue – two on the west side of Grant Avenue and the other on the east. The three and four-story buildings will contain a total of 130 apartments, with parking in a basement garage and on surface lots providing space for 165 cars.
The buildings were approved conditionally, with several minor changes to the exterior design requested. Future phases of the development, including a larger building proposed for the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Grant, will need to return to the commission for approval.
For more information, see www.columbus.gov.
