Long effort to develop site lands in lawsuit

Developer sues city of Worthington over land

A Columbus developer has sued the city of Worthington over the inability to develop a long-debated piece of property that once housed the United Methodist Children’s Home.

Lifestyle Communities, which owns the 38-acre site on High Street, filed the suit Thursday in federal court, calling the city’s refusal to allow the property to be developed “an outrageous abuse of power.”

The lawsuit is the culmination of a battle between developers and the city over the property that began in 2011, when the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church put the property for sale after closing the residential youth center on the site.

Since then, several plans to put residential and commercial development on the site have met city resistance. Lifestyle Communities, which bought the site in 2017, filed the suit after a series of unusual steps by the Council in January that effectively prevented Lifestyle from advancing its plan to develop the property.

“This is the most egregious misuse of power and process by a local government I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Joseph Miller, an attorney with Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, who filed the suit on behalf of Lifestyle.

The suit argues that “the city has delayed and ultimately blocked the property’s development through completely arbitrary and capricious abuses of power that disregard Lifestyle’s rights secured by the United States and Ohio Constitutions.”

Worthington spokesperson Anne Brown said the city does not comment on litigation, but she offered a statement about the property.

“The future of the former United Methodist Children’s Home property is critically important to the Worthington community,” she said. “Public input has shown that there are differing opinions about the best final outcome. We continue to welcome community conversation and evaluate next steps.”

The property, a few blocks north of downtown Worthington, has been a political hot potato for years in the community. Some Council members and a community group have resisted largescale development of the site and sought support instead to develop a park on the land.

Lifestyle claims in the suit that council members, led by current Council President David Robinson, sought to prevent the development of the property in order to force Lifestyle to sell it at a distressed price so the city could buy it for a park.

The suit cites a “confidential” memo circulated among council members in 2018 as evidence of what it calls the “scheme,” along with public statements by some council members that they would never allow Lifestyle to develop the site.

Robinson did not respond Friday to an email seeking comment.

Lifestyle argues that the city showed no willingness to seriously consider the

plan the developer eventually proposed for the site in 2020. Instead, the suit argues, members of the city’s Municipal Planning Commission and Architectural Review Board told Lifestyle to rework the plan to incorporate vague features such as “unspecified ‘childish’ elements so that the development conveys Worthington’s story through ‘poetry.’ “

Lifestyle’s most recent proposal for the site, submitted in September, called for about 600 apartments, townhomes and single-family homes, along with commercial uses on High Street. That plan was rejected by the council in December.

Lifestyle claims objections to its plan were not anchored in objective criteria that Lifestyle could realistically address.

The suit claims “the city has arbitrarily and capriciously singled Lifestyle out, deprived it of any legitimate process, and subjugated Lifestyle’s private property rights to the unfettered discretion of city officials’ arbitrary whims and fancies.”

The suit seeks the right to develop the property without “illegitimate restrictions and to recoup tens of millions of dollars in damages, costs, and expenses.”

Jon Melchi, president of the Building Association of Central Ohio, said the suit illustrates the challenges developers face in some communities to build housing.

“Central Ohio issued 2,000 fewer multifamily building permits last year, and this is a textbook reason why,” said Melchi, a Worthington resident who served on the city’s recent Vision Committee. “It appears clear the city never had any interest in partnering with Lifestyle or anyone for that matter.” jweiker@dispatch.com @Jimweiker

On Monday General Motors took the first step toward its promise to dominate U.S. electric vehicle sales by mid-decade, as the first 2023 Cadillac Lyriq electric SUVS started production.

The Lyriq is the first EV to come out of GM’S luxury brand, Cadillac.

It is intended to boost the brand’s sales and start Cadillac’s segue to an allelectric lineup by 2030. GM intends to sell all-electric cars across its brands by 2035.

GM is making the Lyriq at its Spring Hill Assembly plant in Tennessee and by midmorning Monday, production Lyriqs rolled off the assembly line as first-shift workers gathered with company leaders to celebrate.

Two UAW members drove one of the newly built Lyriqs onto the stage as a symbol that GM is bringing its workforce along with its transformation to all EVS.

“You’re not just making a new vehicle, you’re building the transformation of Cadillac and you’re building the transformation of General Motors,” Rory Harvey, Cadillac’s vice president, told the plant workers.

Big demand, long wait

Customers looking to order a Lyriq, which starts at $59,990, should prepare to wait.

Cadillac will open up its order banks on May 19, but it will probably be sometime next year before many get one due to high demand, Harvey said.

Cadillac has 240,000 hand-raisers for the vehicle, up from 233,000 just weeks ago, he said. A hand-raiser is a person who expresses interest in the car, but does not put down money on it.

The Lyriq is GM’S second EV to come off GM’S Ultium platform, which will underpin and propel all of GM’S future EVS. The first was the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup made at Factory ZERO in Detroit and Hamtramck, which started production late last year. GM has said it will bring at least 30 new EVS to market by 2025.

Besides the Lyriq, GM builds the Cadillac XT5 and XT6 SUVS and the GMC Acadia SUV at Spring Hill. It also makes a variety of engines used across GM’S lineup.

The plant will ramp up its Lyriq production over the next nine months and it has capacity to build 200,000 Lyriqs annually, said GM President Mark Reuss, who was at the plant to mark the occasion.

Reuss reiterated GM’S promise to be the EV leader in America by building and selling 1 million EVS by mid-decade, adding, “The Lyriq will help the company get there.”

Local UAW 1853 Shop Chairman Danny Taylor told the workforce that EVS are the future for the auto industry and the union workforce is crucial to making the switch from gasoline-powered vehicles to EVS seamless.

“We are at the forefront of GM’S allelectric future,” Taylor said. “When you see how much people love and want this product it wouldn’t be possible without the rank and file of the UAW Local 1853. You showed you are a ‘can do’ workforce. Now we are building for today and for generations to come.”

‘Spring Hill City’

The Lyriq launch is crucial to GM’S luxury brand Cadillac.

GM has declared that Cadillac will lead in technology across the company, which it believes will draw in new customers across all GM brands.

The Lyriq launch “is a moment where we’ve made Cadillac special in terms of material and design,” Reuss said. “If it’s new … whatever we’re talking about, you’ll see it in Cadillac first. This is bringing Cadillac back to leadership and tierone luxury and making an American luxury brand highly desirable.”

In October 2020, GM said it will invest $2 billion in Spring Hill to build the Lyriq and other EVS. Spring Hill’s paint and body shops were expanded and the general assembly was upgraded with new machines, conveyors, controls and tooling.

GM is moving production of the nextgeneration GMC Acadia to Lansing Delta Township Assembly where it invested more than $100 million in retooling to build it. That will allow for Spring Hill to get more EVS to build.

“We will have a battery assembly plant as well as the Ultium cell plant — it’s sort of a Spring Hill City,” Reuss said. “It’s highly integrated. We have more (EV) models planned. We haven’t talked about that yet. We do have additional models to come into this plant that are Ev-based.”

Nearby Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture between GM and battery-maker LG Energy Solution, is building a $2.2 billion factory to make battery cells.

Currently, GM assembles the battery packs in Spring Hill.

But the cells for those battery packs will come from LG’S factory in Ochang, South Korea, and then from the Ultium Cells plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which starts operations this summer, Reuss said. When the Ultium Cells plant in Spring Hills is operational next year, it will feed the cells to Spring Hill for the EV production.

Contact Jamie L. Lareau: 313-2222149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan.