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Deep dives · Franklin County

Crew Stadium Site and the Hollywood Casino Vote

Ohio's 2009 casino amendment fixed Columbus's casino on Arena District land where the Crew now play. Franklin County voted 82 percent in 2010 to move it west.

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At a glance

FactValue
TypeStadium site and casino ballot history (2009-2025)
CountyFranklin
Coordinates39.9689 N, 83.0168 W (stadium parcel)
Statewide vote on Issue 3, the casino amendmentAbout 53 percent yes, 47 percent no (November 3, 2009)
Franklin County vote on Issue 3109,779 yes, 152,649 no, 58.2 percent against (2009)
Franklin County vote on Issue 2, the relocation amendment151,071 yes, 33,634 no, 81.8 percent for (May 4, 2010)
Arena District casino land bought by Penn National24 acres for $36 million (reported 2010)
Former Delphi plant land bought by Penn National123 acres for $2.5 million (reported 2010)
Casino site written into the Ohio ConstitutionAbout 113.794 acres, tax parcel 140-003620-00 (2010)
Tax on gross casino revenue33 percent (2009)
Hollywood Casino Columbus openedOctober 8, 2012
Games at opening2,525 slots, 79 table games, 36 poker tables (2012)
Hollywood Columbus gross casino revenue$294,712,983, highest of Ohio's four casinos (2025)
Slots and tables at Hollywood Columbus1,610 slots, 103 tables (December 2025)
Casino parcel today107.87 acres at 200 Georgesville Road, owned by GLP Capital LP, base value $165,254,400 (2026)
Crew's first stadium openedMay 15, 1999, $28.5 million
Downtown stadium openedJuly 3, 2021, as Lower.com Field
Downtown stadium capacity at opening20,011 (2021)
Stadium parcel today10.72 acres at 96 Columbus Crew Way, owned by the Confluence Community Authority (2026)

Overview

The Columbus Crew's downtown stadium stands on land that Ohio voters, most of them without knowing it, once set aside for a casino. The 2009 ballot issue that legalized casino gambling in Ohio listed the actual parcel numbers on West Nationwide Boulevard where the Columbus casino could be built, at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers. Franklin County voted the amendment down, 152,649 to 109,779, even as the state passed it by about 53 to 47 percent. Six months later the county voted 151,071 to 33,634 for a second amendment moving the casino to the closed Delphi auto-parts plant on the West Side, where Hollywood Casino Columbus opened on October 8, 2012. The Arena District land waited for another decade, until the Crew's new owners chose what WOSU called the last parcel of available land in the district for the stadium that opened on July 3, 2021.

Ground at the confluence

Columbus historian Ed Lentz told WOSU in 2019 that the stadium ground had been occupied for more than 200 years. He said the first settlement, Franklinton, grew on the west side above the confluence, while the east bank stayed undeveloped because it was low and prone to flooding. As downtown land grew expensive, factories moved toward the confluence, many of them doing what Lentz called "nasty, dirty dangerous business," among them a foundry of the Jaeger Machine Works, which made concrete-mixing equipment. Because the foundry land stayed cheap, the city chose the riverbank just west of the Jaeger site for its municipal light plant around the turn of the 20th century. Jaeger closed in 1992, and only then did the land clear out. In 2014 the Columbus Dispatch, writing in Columbus CEO, identified Nationwide Realty Investors' roughly 25 vacant acres on the north side of Nationwide Boulevard as the former Jaeger site that had once been proposed for Hollywood Casino Columbus.

Issue 3: the amendment that named the land

Ohio voters approved Issue 3 on November 3, 2009, as a constitutional amendment proposed by initiative petition. It authorized four casino facilities, one each at a designated location in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo and one in Franklin County. It set a 33 percent state tax on gross casino revenue, required each first operator to pay a $50 million license fee and invest at least $250 million, and allowed up to 5,000 slot machines per casino. It also barred local zoning from blocking the four casinos.

Mike Curtin, retired president of the Dispatch Printing Company, told WOSU that "very few voters in Central Ohio were aware" that the ballot issue included parcel numbers specifying that only land on Nationwide Boulevard could hold the Columbus casino. Penn National Gaming of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, held the right to the Columbus casino, and it paid Plaza Properties $36 million for 24 acres on West Nationwide Boulevard, about $1.5 million an acre. In October 2009 Ohio's Office of Budget and Management and Department of Taxation estimated the four casinos would bring in $643 million a year in taxes, or $470 million if seven racetrack video lottery sites opened.

Franklin County said no

Franklin County's official canvass shows 109,779 votes for Issue 3 and 152,649 against, with 262,428 votes cast on the question, or 41.8 percent to 58.2 percent. The same ballot carried the county's veterans' bonus, Issue 1, with 72.8 percent. The Lantern reported in 2010 that Franklin County was the only county receiving a casino whose voters disapproved of the measure. Curtin put the result for Central Ohio's seven counties at 58 to 42 percent against. Columbus CEO's later timeline gives the statewide yes vote as 52 percent; the 53-to-47 margin given above is Curtin's.

The fight over the Arena District

The Arena District's owners and developers, the Dispatch Printing Company and Nationwide Realty Investors, were "vehemently opposed" to a casino there. Curtin told WOSU that then-Dispatch publisher John Wolfe led a campaign to move the casino, citing projected traffic and the fear that the Arena District would become a casino district, and that the Dispatch Printing Company owns 20 percent of everything in the Arena District. Curtin explained the traffic problem in geographic terms: Interstate 670 closed the site to the north, the Olentangy River to the west and the municipal light plant to the south, leaving Nationwide Boulevard from the east as the only real access for a projected 10,000 cars.

Curtin and Franklin County Commissioner John O'Grady co-chaired Stand Up Columbus, a political action committee that lobbied for the move. Curtin said Penn concluded after taking "the community pulse" that staying could mean a prolonged fight. Penn considered locations from the South Side to Northland before settling on the Delphi site, which offered cheap land, freeway access and residents eager to welcome it.

The Delphi plant and the West Side

The plant on Georgesville Road was about 60 years old in June 2007, with about 450 workers, when a new national United Auto Workers contract with Delphi signaled its likely closing. The Lantern described it as a former General Motors-Delphi auto-parts plant. It shut in December 2007, leaving a polluted, vacant 123-acre site.

Columbus CEO described the surrounding Westland area in 2010 as a place of half-vacant strip malls, where White Westinghouse had closed in the late 1980s and an Ames distribution center in 2001. Westland Mall, built around 1969, had lost JCPenney in 1997 and Macy's in 2007, and the 1,700-unit Wingate Village apartments behind it were 20 percent occupied in 2009. That same year, the magazine reported, the Associated Press named the Westland neighborhood the nation's least occupied, with nearly 70 percent of its residences vacant; car dealer Chris Haydocy later recalled it as "the loneliest neighborhood in the United States".

Haydocy and other West Side business owners formed Weston Vision, a nonprofit economic development coalition, in 2009, and Penn announced its choice of the West Side at Haydocy Automotive. "We were able to get 3,000 signatures in one weekend," Haydocy said. Penn paid $2.5 million for the 123 acres, about $20,000 an acre, roughly one seventy-fourth of the per-acre price of the Arena District land.

Issue 2: moving a casino by constitutional amendment

Because the site was fixed in the constitution, moving it took another amendment, which went on the May 4, 2010, primary ballot as Issue 2. The Lantern reported bipartisan support, including Gov. Ted Strickland, John Kasich, both state parties, and the Hilltop and Westland business associations, with the Ohio Roundtable the only opposition a campaign spokeswoman knew of. Nationwide Realty Investors and American Electric Power each gave $500,000 or more to the Vote Yes on Issue 2 campaign.

Franklin County's official results show 151,071 votes for Issue 2 and 33,634 against, 81.8 percent in favor. "In Franklin County, it was 82-18, which is unheard of," Curtin said. The amended constitution now defines the Franklin County casino facility as "an approximate 113.794 acre area," tax parcel 140-003620-00 as identified by the county auditor on January 19, 2010, and records the change as adopted May 4, 2010.

The land then lay in Franklin Township, and that spring the township agreed to annexation by Columbus in return for an estimated $67 million over 50 years, about $1.25 million a year, through a joint economic development district. One trustee, Don Cook, said $3 million to $4 million a year would have been fairer. Penn's cleanup of the Delphi site dealt with pollutants including arsenic and cyanide.

The casino opens

Penn's 2010 plan called for a $400 million investment, including the state's $50 million license fee, with 3,000 slot machines and 80 to 85 table games in 180,000 square feet, plus 3,500 construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs. The Ohio Department of Taxation projected that Columbus, Franklin County and local school districts would take in about $64.1 million a year from the four casinos. Hollywood Casino Columbus opened on October 8, 2012, and took in $165 million in wagers in its first three and a half weeks. Columbus CEO's timeline counts 2,525 slot machines, 79 gaming tables and 36 poker tables at opening.

By December 2013 Columbus CEO wrote that Ohio's casinos had not "delivered the dynamite cash payout that won voters over". Hollywood Columbus had averaged $17,925,528 in revenue a month since opening, and the state budget office estimated its tax at $82.04 million for 2014, against a 2009 estimate of $188.61 million a year without racetrack video lottery terminals. The casino drew about 10,000 visitors a day, and public money followed: a $5 million county rebuild of Georgesville Road and an $80 million Ohio Department of Transportation reconstruction of Interstate 270 on the Southwest Side. In 2013 the Ohio Casino Control Commission approved Penn's split into an operating company and a real estate investment trust, Gaming and Leisure Properties, which leases the casino back to Penn. In 2017 WOSU found about 1,000 employees at the casino, a 9 percent rise in jobs around it and a net gain of 40 businesses, but plenty of empty lots and storefronts.

The casino's money

The Ohio Casino Control Commission reports $294,712,983 in gross casino revenue at Hollywood Columbus for 2025, more than any other Ohio casino, out of $1,033,920,366 for all four. That is about $24.6 million a month, and at the constitution's 33 percent rate about $97 million in tax for the year. Slots supplied $226,082,215 of the 2025 total and table games $68,630,768. The casino reported 1,610 slot machines and 103 tables at the end of 2025, fewer slots than at opening. The commission notes that its figures may differ from those reported to the Ohio Department of Taxation.

The constitution sends 51 percent of the casino tax to all 88 counties by population, 34 percent to counties for their school districts by enrollment, 5 percent to the host city, 3 percent each to the casino commission and a racing commission fund, and 2 percent each to law enforcement training and a problem gambling and addictions fund. By that formula, the host-city share of Hollywood Columbus's 2025 tax comes to roughly $4.9 million.

The Franklin County Auditor now lists 200 Georgesville Road as a 107.87-acre parcel, 147-290553, owned by GLP Capital LP, with a base value of $165,254,400, in the Columbus-Franklin-Southwest annexation tax district. In July 2023 Penn and Gaming and Leisure Properties announced a $100 million expansion with a seven-story, 200-room hotel.

The Crew's two stadiums

The Crew opened their first home on May 15, 1999, a $28.5 million stadium on 15 acres of the Ohio Expo Center grounds along Interstate 71, about three miles north of downtown, before an overflow crowd of 24,741. The club calls it the first soccer-specific stadium in the country, and it was renamed MAPFRE Stadium under a naming deal in 2015. Between 2001 and 2013 the U.S. men's national team beat Mexico there 2-0 four times, the origin of the "Dos a Cero" legend, and in 2020 the Crew won their second MLS Cup there, 3-0 over Seattle.

In 2017 owner Anthony Precourt said he might move the team and would stay only if a new stadium were built downtown. The next year Jimmy and Dee Haslam, owners of the Cleveland Browns, the Edwards family of Columbus and the Columbus Partnership bought the club from Precourt Sports Ventures. In December 2018 city officials and the Haslam Sports Group announced a $230 million stadium west of Huntington Park in the Arena District, on the confluence land where the casino had once been planned. Curtin said in 2019 that the access problem was still a challenge the club and the city acknowledged. That autumn salvaged Ohio Penitentiary stones, including date stones of 1876 and 1878, lay at the edge of the stadium site until Nationwide Realty Investors transferred them to Columbus Landmarks.

The Crew scheduled their final match at Historic Crew Stadium for June 19, 2021, against Chicago Fire FC, with their new training center, the OhioHealth Performance Center, set to open beside it. On June 15, 2021, the club named the new stadium Lower.com Field, gave its capacity as 20,011 and set its opening for July 3 against New England, calling it the cornerstone of a new neighborhood in Astor Park. On November 25, 2025, the Crew announced that the stadium would be called ScottsMiracle-Gro Field beginning with the 2026 season, and noted that the club has won MLS Cups in 2008, 2020 and 2023. The county auditor lists the stadium on a 10.72-acre parcel, 010-300553, at 96 Columbus Crew Way, owned by the Confluence Community Authority and classed as an arena, with a base value of $297,010,600.

Myths and the record

Timeline

  • 1992: The Jaeger Machine Co. closes its works near the confluence, and the land begins to clear. (source)
  • 1999: The Crew open their stadium on the Ohio Expo Center grounds on May 15. (source)
  • 2007: The Delphi plant on Georgesville Road closes in December. (source)
  • 2009: Ohio voters approve Issue 3 on November 3; Franklin County votes 58.2 percent against. (source)
  • 2010: Voters approve Issue 2 on May 4, moving the Columbus casino to the West Side; Franklin County votes 81.8 percent yes. (source)
  • 2012: Hollywood Casino Columbus opens on October 8. (source)
  • 2013: The Ohio Casino Control Commission approves Penn National's real estate spin-off. (source)
  • 2015: Crew Stadium becomes MAPFRE Stadium. (source)
  • 2017: Owner Anthony Precourt raises the prospect of moving the team. (source)
  • 2018: The Haslam and Edwards families and the Columbus Partnership buy the Crew; a downtown stadium is announced in December. (source)
  • 2021: The Crew open Lower.com Field on July 3. (source)
  • 2025: Hollywood Columbus reports $294.7 million in gross casino revenue; on November 25 the stadium's new name, ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, is announced. (source) (source)

Sources

Towns and ZIP codes

Water, health, jobs and history for the places on the shores and just downstream.

Towns

ZIP codes

Questions

Was the Columbus casino supposed to be where the Crew stadium is?

Yes. The 2009 constitutional amendment that legalized Ohio's four casinos tied the Columbus casino to specific parcels on West Nationwide Boulevard in the Arena District, the land at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers where the Crew's downtown stadium opened on July 3, 2021. Penn National Gaming had paid $36 million for 24 acres there. A second amendment in May 2010 moved the casino to the former Delphi plant on the West Side.

How did Franklin County vote on the 2009 casino amendment?

Franklin County voted against it. Official county results for State Issue 3 on November 3, 2009, show 109,779 votes for and 152,649 against, about 42 percent to 58 percent. Statewide the amendment passed by about 53 to 47 percent, and Franklin County was the only one of the four casino counties to vote no.

Why was the Columbus casino moved to the West Side?

The owners and developers of the Arena District, the Dispatch Printing Company and Nationwide Realty Investors, strongly opposed a casino there, citing traffic of about 10,000 cars on a site reachable only along Nationwide Boulevard. Penn National Gaming weighed five potential locations and chose the closed Delphi auto-parts plant on Georgesville Road, buying 123 acres for $2.5 million. Because the site was written into the Ohio Constitution, moving it took another statewide vote, Issue 2 on May 4, 2010.

What was the vote to move the Columbus casino?

State Issue 2 on the May 4, 2010, primary ballot amended the Ohio Constitution to replace the Arena District parcels with an approximately 113.794-acre parcel in Franklin County, tax parcel 140-003620-00. In Franklin County it passed 151,071 to 33,634, about 82 percent to 18 percent, according to the county's official results.

When did Hollywood Casino Columbus open?

Hollywood Casino Columbus opened on October 8, 2012, at 200 Georgesville Road on the West Side, with 2,525 slot machines, 79 table games and 36 poker tables. It was described as a $400 million investment, including the state's $50 million license fee. In its first three and a half weeks it took in $165 million in wagers.

How much money does Hollywood Casino Columbus make?

The Ohio Casino Control Commission reports $294,712,983 in gross casino revenue at Hollywood Columbus for 2025, the most of Ohio's four casinos, out of $1,033,920,366 statewide. The Ohio Constitution taxes that revenue at 33 percent, which works out to about $97 million for 2025. Ohio budget officials had projected $188.61 million a year in Columbus casino taxes in 2009.

Where did the Crew play before the downtown stadium?

From 1999 to 2021 the Crew played at the stadium on the Ohio Expo Center grounds along Interstate 71, opened on May 15, 1999, as the first soccer-specific stadium in Major League Soccer. It was called Columbus Crew Stadium, then MAPFRE Stadium from 2015, and later Historic Crew Stadium. The club's training center, the OhioHealth Performance Center, was built next to it.

What is the Crew stadium called now?

The Crew's downtown stadium opened as Lower.com Field on July 3, 2021, and was renamed ScottsMiracle-Gro Field under a naming deal announced on November 25, 2025, for the 2026 season. The Franklin County Auditor lists its 10.72-acre parcel at 96 Columbus Crew Way as owned by the Confluence Community Authority.

What was on the Crew stadium land before?

Factories. Columbus historian Ed Lentz told WOSU that the low, flood-prone ground near the confluence drew dirty, dangerous industry, including a foundry of the Jaeger Machine Co., which made concrete-mixing equipment, and that the city built its municipal light plant just to the west. Jaeger closed in 1992 and the land cleared out.

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