Ohio State and City of Columbus in ProjectONE Partnership
ProjectONE is The Ohio State University Medical Center’s $1 billion expansion that will provide a new home for the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute and a new site for the care of critically ill patients. The expansion will generate up to 10,000 jobs for Columbus—6,000 at the Medical Center plus 4,000 related to the growth. To help finance the project, the city of Columbus has offered a performance-based tax incentive for a portion of each of the 6,000 new Medical Center jobs.
Ohio State, in turn, will reinvest $10 million in tax incentives from ProjectONE to improve health care and housing on the city’s East Side. Exactly how these dollars will be reinvested will be determined through a study of the neighborhood and feedback from residents.
ProjectONE and Construction Reform
Ohio law requires that state-funded construction projects award separate contracts for each part of a project, such as contracts for mechanical, electrical and plumbing work.
Last fall, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland convened a panel to recommend ways to increase the speed and efficiency of public sector construction projects. This resulted in proposed construction reform that would permit new methods of project management that might save the state $330 million annually.
The reform procedures would allow the state to use either the current method of management or one of three other ways that give more control and responsibility to the contractor, architect or both. ProjectONE has been designated as one of three Construction Reform Demonstration Projects that will test alternative methods of public construction management.
“This kind of construction flexibility on our expansion will allow us to be a better financial steward through what we hope will be a faster and more efficient completion of the project,” says Steven Gabbe, MD, OSU senior vice president for Health Sciences and CEO of OSU Medical Center.