As Fort Rapids sale looms, Columbus church eyes plan to redevelop waterpark ...Middle East

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Plans to transform Fort Rapids into an affordable housing complex may include redeveloping the property's waterpark into a community center organized by a local church.

Drever Capital Management, a California-based real estate company known for revitalizing buildings, has long planned to purchase the 16-acre Fort Rapids property on Columbus' East Side. Led by company chairman Maxwell Drever, the acquisition is awaiting court approval and could yield community programs inside the property led by the Lancaster chapter of WorldFire Church.

"I've got older teenage sons now and we took our kids to that waterpark years ago, and they were toddlers and so we've got memories of that waterpark," Josh Lawrence, senior lead pastor for WorldFire's Lancaster campus, said. "We've just seen it kind of slowly go downhill ever since then, and it's such an eyesore as you drive by." Watch a previous NBC4 report on the former Fort Rapids property in the video player above.

Lawrence told NBC4 he was drawn to the project about four years ago, when Drever stepped in with an offer in 2021 to flip the former resort into apartments for low-income families. Drever's proposal mirrored similar workforce housing developments that the company has transformed from "broken hotels" in other U.S. states. 

Although Drever knew he wanted to renovate the property's former hotel rooms into at least 240 apartments, his vision at the time lacked a crucial puzzle piece: What to do with the property's 60,000-square-foot waterpark?

Dan Sheeran, a Columbus real estate agent working with the company, connected Drever to Lawrence, who dreamed up a plan to launch a variety of community programs inside the waterpark. Although still in the early planning phases, Lawrence said the renovation could include a daycare, athletic facility, social services like drug and alcohol addiction counseling, and a drive-up food bank.

"We think that we could deliver a really great solution, not only for the housing crisis that Columbus has been very vocal about being an issue, but also food scarcity, where we could get some fresh produce and some good quality food on the tables of the residents," Lawrence said. "It's less about dollars and cents, and it's more about how can we impact the community for good?"

Karl Zavitkovsky, a Dallas-based real estate finance executive advising Drever, echoed Lawrence's goal and said the company is aiming to renovate Fort Rapid's existing structures rather than construct new buildings to keep costs down. The lower the project's price tag, the lower rent will be for the property's future residents, Zavitkovsky said.

"I think we're kind of coming to the conclusion and trying to put together a successful partnership, and I think we feel like we can convert this into something that would be very good for the city of Columbus," Zavitkovsky said.

Zavitkovsky noted the longtime plan has been plagued by various stages of litigation. If approved, Drever's acquisition will be made possible in part because of a summary judgement granted in February in favor of the Jizi Cui estate, dealing a blow to Fort Rapids' current acting owner, Jeff Oh Kern. The ruling cleared a legal hurdle that was preventing a sale of the property, meaning Drever's plan could move forward.

A California investor, Kern bought Fort Rapids for $2.5 million at an auction in 2017, a year after the city of Columbus ordered the resort to close due to a history of health and safety complaints. Sheeran told NBC4 in 2023 that Kern was planning to transform the site into a part-hotel, part-soccer facility.

That plan faded when Kern learned the land next door, which he intended to buy, was already under contract and later bought by Mount Carmel Health System. At that point, the out-of-state investor lost interest in revamping the resort "because his dream was not really going to happen," Sheeran said.

Kern gave up and transferred ownership of the site to Cui but backpedaled on that plan when Cui died without a will in 2019, Sheeran said. He then successfully moved a Franklin County probate court to restore his ownership status.

Since then, Kern has let the abandoned Fort Rapids fall into a state of disrepair, racking up code violation after code violation from the city while threatening to sue anyone who sells the property out of his hands. In 2018, millions of gallons of water poured out of the hotel’s windows after a pipe burst on its upper floor.

Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein in August 2021 declared the site a nuisance over Kern's failure to get it into compliance and secure the proper permits for renovation, Pete Shipley, a spokesperson for the city attorney's office, said. A year later, the work still wasn't finished. Klein ordered Kern in contempt of court and issued a $1,000 fine per day until he brought it into compliance.

Last 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 this past August, his daily fines were increased to $2,000 and his bond was set at $2.5 million.

After three years of attempts to purchase the property, Sheeran and Drever finally got their initial approval last October to begin trying to purchase the former waterpark. Days later, the building was struck by a significant fire. Sheeran and the developers told NBC4 in November that they still intended to go through with the purchase, having already invested nearly $500,000.

Drever is expecting the court ruling on the acquisition to be released later this summer.

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