City officials have given approval to use tax increment financing (TIF) funds to pay a landscape architecture and planning firm for a schematic design of a “transformed” Bakalar Greens space at Columbus Municipal Airport.

The Columbus Redevelopment Commission voted to contribute an amount not to exceed $50,000 from the airport TIF district to Hitchcock Design Group for the work, with “reasonable reimbursements” to be provided for printing, mileage, and courier, per the approved resolution.

The vote also gave Redevelopment Commission President Al Roszczyk, or his designee, authority to execute any necessary documents for entering into a contract with Hitchcock Design.

“This is something that we’ve been working on for quite some time,” Airport Director Bryan Payne told the commission. “This rendering that you see here is something that Randy (Royer) and them put together in 2017, 2018, I think it was. So it’s been quite a while ago that we’ve had this idea and trying to figure out how we (can) continue to engage our area at AirPark Columbus.”

Some of the proposed improvements include “pedestrian walks, parking, an interactive fountain, plaza areas, shade structures, seating, sculptural mounding and landscaping,” the resolution reads.

The initial design, Payne said, “was more or less Randy and I spitballing some ideas back and forth with one another” and said their goal would be to take the concept and further develop it into “more of a plan format.”

“I would like to focus on the idea of this concept of the interactive fountain on the middle there, a water feature of some kind — having an opportunity to have that for people to come out and enjoy something that nowhere else currently exists in the City of Columbus.”

Payne said the area would be walkable for people living on the eastern border of the airport, like those in Candlelight Village, now that the People Trail is connected from Deerbrook Drive down to Bakalar Greens thanks to an extension of Grissom Street the city completed last year.

Some sort of performance platforms may be included in the final design as well, according to Payne.

“We do know that IU Columbus has some interest currently in performing arts and performing arts majors, so what does that look like? Creating an area on the airport for those students to be able to be at,” Payne said, adding he hopes that Bakalar Greens be a place that IU Columbus students could congregate in general.

Once a design is ultimately chosen and cost estimates are provided, airport officials may come back before the redevelopment commission to ask for funds to pay for construction, but Payne said they are also looking for grant opportunities.

“We are looking at other grant opportunities around the state. We are looking at other areas that have done interactive fountains or water play areas, a lot of playscapes. So are there grants out there? We know there are. Our opportunity now is to figure out, what are our next funding cycles?”

City council liasion to the redevelopment commission Grace Kestler, D-at-large, likened the plans for Bakalar Greens to the ongoing downtown entrance plaza redesign as similar efforts to activate different areas of the city.

“These plans and pictures you’ve got here are on par with what people want,” Kestler said, based on what city officials have been hearing from the public.