Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark to be sold and turned into workforce housing
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- The former Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark building is being sold to a real estate investor with plans to convert it to affordable workforce housing.
After three years of attempting to buy the 12-story hotel and waterpark, a sale has been approved to Drever Capital Management. California real estate developer Maxwell Drever confirmed the acquisition.
Drever said his company has done over 200 apartment transformation projects, including an array of Columbus properties. But this project will be a tall task, as he said they have already invested nearly $500,000 in upkeep.
The Fort Rapids sale came after an appeal from Jeff Oh Kern claiming ownership rights was dismissed in court. Since the property was declared a public nuisance by Columbus City Attorney Zack Klein in 2021, the deserted waterpark has continued to rack up code violations.
“The estate is broke, and Jeff won’t pay anything,” Columbus real estate agent Dan Sheeran, who was working to sell the property, said in 2018. “I’m not even sure why the electricity we have — and by electricity I mean four or five outlets — is still on.”
In June, Kern was ordered by the Franklin County Municipal Court's Environmental Division to pay $199,000 in contempt fines to the city, as well as being hit with $1,000 in daily fines. When a warrant was issued for his arrest in August, his daily fines were increased to $2,000 and his bond was set at $2.5 million. He still owes the contempt fines, but they can be paid out of proceeds from the Fort Rapids sale, according to Klein's office.
Kern has dealt with similar legal troubles elsewhere. In 2023, he averted a jury trial in Midland, Michigan, in a criminal case related to his failure to clean up the demolition site of a former Holiday Inn he owned.
“It’s astounding how the Fort Rapids project is basically paralleling ours,” Midland City Attorney Jim Branson told NBC4 in 2023.
Fort Rapids was ordered to close in 2016 after a series of code violations. In 2018, millions of gallons of water poured out of the hotel's windows from a burst pipe on an upper floor.