Local Politics: City Council votes today on plans to turn McCoy Park into an NWSL training facility

Columbus City Council is set to vote at tonight’s meeting on an agreement that would formalize the bid for a new National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team that has already been submitted by investors to the league. Those investors include the Haslam Sports Group, Drs. Pete and Chris Edwards, and Nationwide Realty Investors LLC. 

Previously, City Council held a public meeting on Monday, April 6, during which Columbus residents offered testimony both for and against the proposal. The testimony in favor generally focused on role models and inspiration for young female athletes, projected financial benefits to the city, and the city’s commitment to soccer. The testimony against the proposal, including my own, focused on the inherent inequity in giving tax dollars to benefit a few billionaire investors; budget items that are underfunded and should receive these tax dollars instead, such as our schools; and the Republican campaigns that these billionaire investors regularly support.

Liz Reed, Chair of the Southwest Area Commission, testified against the agreement on April 6. She emphasized how unfair the loss of McCoy Park would be to Columbus residents, given that the city had made firm commitments to the area residents for improvements to McCoy Park that would begin in 2026. Not only were these improvements that had been planned with community input and paid architectural renderings, they included amenities that would enable physically disabled people to use the park in new and better ways. 

Some council members expressed surprise and anger during the meeting that they had not been informed of these existing plans for McCoy and the promises made to the neighboring community.

Despite this discussion and expression of concern, when the Council regrouped on April 13 for its regular meeting, the NWSL bid deal was on the agenda, and it contained the same plan for McCoy Park to be given over in full for use as the NWSL training facility. When the Director of Development, Michael Stevens, was asked by council whether there had been conversations with the local residents, he said that he believed the Department of Parks and Recreation was in ongoing conversation with residents. This prompted local residents in the gallery to shout, “No!” – a detail confirmed by Liz Reed, who also testified at the April 13 meeting that no one from the city had reached out to her in the week since she had testified previously.

When asked by The Columbus Dispatch about the lack of discussion with residents, Mayor Andrew Ginther and councilmember Nick Bankston said that the city needed to move fast, and that’s why the public was not given time for input before the park was promised for an NWSL facility.

But no one has explained why the city needed to move so fast. One might assume that there was a deadline given by the NWSL for submitting bids, however; the NWSL expansion process now works on a rolling basis, with bids considered individually as they are received. Perhaps the rush comes from the investors themselves, who opted to submit a bid to the NWSL without first having a formal agreement from the city and the county. Which would be their problem, not ours. 

Council President Shannon Hardin expressed dismay at the lack of communication between the city and the residents during the April 13 council meeting. When councilmembers Nancy Day-Achauer and Melissa Green spoke powerfully regarding their opposition to the given plan, Hardin repeated that this was “just the first reading.” That phrasing might lead someone to believe that the legislation would be altered prior to the second reading, but as of Sunday evening at 9 p.m., the deal remains on the agenda for Monday’s meeting exactly as it was first written.

Reed indicated in a social media post on Facebook that she met with city administration and some Franklinton residents on April 16. At that time, the city did not provide any plan to replace McCoy Park. It had not identified any parcels or funding that could be used for a replacement park. Significantly, Reed said that there also was a lack of recognition from the city of the failure to consider the community or to properly plan the NWSL bid. Her impression was that the city had “asked the Haslam Sports Group what they wanted, and endeavored to give it to them, without regard to the community.”

If one removes the noise churned up by the Columbus Partnership’s astroturfed campaign to bring the NWSL to Columbus, the problem is very clear. After spending years working with neighbors and promising improvements to benefit disabled residents, our elected leaders are giving away a 28-acre park in the poorest corner of the city for the use of billionaire investors.

Mayor Ginther and Council President Hardin have each been quoted offering vague promises to honor commitments and give the southwest area residents the park they deserve and were promised. But those are clearly lies. If they were committed to giving southwest residents the park they were promised, this deal wouldn’t even be considered and the improvements to McCoy would be happening right now.

If all of this feels like deja vu, it’s because Columbus residents were sold similar lies when our tax dollars went to support construction of the new Crew Stadium. Coincidentally, those investments went to benefit most of the very same billionaire investors – the Haslams and Dr. Pete Edwards. 

At that time, in 2018, Shannon Hardin said that residents should receive a “clear community benefit” for subsidizing the Crew Stadium deal. The promised “Community Sports Park” at Mapfre Stadium fulfilled the criteria for him, because it would benefit young people in Linden, the University District, and Weinland Park. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Haslams, Dr. Pete Edwards, and the city and county, promised a sports park that would “provide access for more than 200,000 residents living within 3 miles of the facility to outdoor athletic fields, indoor turf fields, basketball courts, and programming space, as well as additional green space.” The City of Columbus, in return, pledged to invest $50 million in improvements to the site where Crew Stadium would be built.

Young Columbus residents came to speak before council, enthusiastically supporting the deal that would include an amazing sports park. They expressed excitement that they would be able to have their soccer tournaments right here close to home, by Mapfre Stadium. Residents were told that while Crew stadium would begin construction in 2019, the Community Sports Park construction would begin somewhere closer to 2021.

That never occurred.

Instead, after a few years of failed negotiations with the Ohio Expo Center, the city told residents that it would invest in improvements to Kilbourne Run, a park on the Northeast Side that was already city property. The city eventually spent $40 million on these improvements, while Crew ownership contributed $10 million. The improvements were not completed until 2026 and do not include any indoor soccer fields. 

Kilbourne Run is at least four miles from North Linden and seven miles from Weinland Park. It does not include what was promised in facilities, or in terms of its proximity to the people who were supposed to have received the benefit.

While the Crew’s ownership group did not deliver a sports park, the City of Columbus contributed far more than the $50 million it promised toward the costs associated with building Crew Stadium. These immense additional costs were creatively distributed across city departments and tracked by City Auditor Megan Kilgore on a spreadsheet labeled “Other Projects.”

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from that entire experience, President Hardin and Columbus City Council are dutifully marching forward on the orders of the same billionaire investors who failed to deliver on their promises eight years ago. They are ready and willing to write an introductory $25 million check and take McCoy Park from the poorest neighborhood in our city, residents be damned. Which we apparently are.