COLUMBUS, Ohio ( WCMH ) — A real estate investment firm is planning one of the largest affordable housing projects in Franklin County history, including demolishing the vacant Latitude Five25 towers and rehabilitating the Hilltop’s Wedgewood Village.
Nuveen Real Estate’s plans call for Latitude Five25 at 525 Sawyer Blvd. in east Columbus to face a bulldozer and be replaced with a 390-unit apartment complex for low-income families. The 15-story Sawyer Boulevard towers have sat empty since late 2022 , when a pipe burst on Christmas Day forced more than 100 residents to evacuate. Watch a previous NBC4 report on Latitude Five25 in the video player above.
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“We’ve cleaned communities, we’ve cleaned up entire residences,” said Nadir Settles, Nuveen’s global head of real estate impact, during an Ohio Senate Housing Committee meeting in March. “Sawyer towers is a project that is gonna get knocked down, restored back to the heart of what we know that it means to this community.”
Carrying a $147 million cost, Latitude Five25’s redevelopment includes the construction of energy-efficient apartments across five-story buildings, 7,000 square feet of amenities, and more than 100,000 square feet of “passive and active” outdoor space. Nuveen plans to acquire the property this spring before completing demolition early next year.
Latitude Five25 is one piece of Nuveen’s $370 million central Ohio investment that will yield more than 1,200 affordable housing units in the next five years. The projects have the backing of Franklin County commissioners who approved $25 million in grants in December, and green lit a $12.5 million loan through the county’s Affordable Housing Trust in March.
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“When we looked at what happened at Sawyer towers, the condition those residents were living in, not one person in this room would stand for it,” said Joy Bivens, deputy Franklin County administrator, during a meeting last December. “[Nuveen], I can say, after looking at some of the things they’ve done … we’re not trying to concentrate poverty, they don’t even look like buildings [for] folks who are low income.”…