FHWA and MDOT are not going to pay to build retail spaces. This is out of thier mission. In order to get this to work, you are going to need the place to be located where it makes economic sense. I don;t know how many of you have been to Columbus to see this, but it is located on what we could consider Columbus' Woodward [[Old US-23). To the north is the burgeoning area of OSU students and a few blocks to the South is Downtown. It is also located directly next to the convention center. Hence there is a lot of foot traffic in the area.

To sell this to MDOT or FHWA you are going to need to justify that it will make money and either build it as part of a bridge reconstruction with a private company partnership or to have MDOT be the landord and charge rent for the space. Typically it costs about $2 million just to re-deck a road of this size. In order to redeck the existing structure and to widen the bridge to accommodate retail on both sides, it could cost up to about $15 million, or $13 million more than the re-decking just of the engineering, footings, decking and right of way. In either scenario, the private partner or MDOT would need to charge a pretty high rent in order to make this work. It would cost considerably more than it would cost to build the same amount of retail on a piece of land that does not have a bridge under it. Take a look at the amount of abandoned retail there is in many of these areas. You will see that this is going to be a hard sell.

Eastern Market could be a partner but it would be economically risky for both partners.

Remember every dollar MDOT spends on this stuff is one less dollar available to resurface roads or build transit down a street they own like Woodward. Do you really want your Transportation agency to be investing in dogs just because they look pretty?