Columbus will receive more than $1 million in initial settlement funds in its case against the former owners of the Latitude Five25 apartment towers, City Attorney Zach Klein announced on Thursday, November 5, according to a statement from Klein’s office reported by The Columbus Dispatch. The money comes from the city’s case against Paxe Latitude, owner of the twin East Side towers evacuated on Christmas Day 2022 and since demolished, with demolition beginning in May, The Dispatch reported.
Most of the money will be used as seed money for the city’s Tenant Relocation Fund, according to the release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. The fund helps cover initial costs when residents are forced out by an emergency evacuation. Under an ordinance Columbus City Council passed in 2024, landlords are ultimately supposed to repay the city for all relocation expenses in situations like Latitude Five25, so the settlement refills the pot the next emergency will draw on.
Klein framed the payment as accountability, not just recovery of a bill. Latitude Five25 is “an example of the lengths we’ll go to stand up for residents and hold bad landlords accountable,” Klein said in a statement reported by The Columbus Dispatch. “From day one, this has been a team effort to deliver relief to tenants displaced through no fault of their own,” Klein said in the statement reported by The Columbus Dispatch, crediting the Property Action Team, the administration and City Council.
The Christmas 2022 evacuation explains why one complex produced nearly four years of litigation. The two 15-story towers at 525 Sawyer Boulevard, long known as Sawyer Towers, had endured periods without electricity and heat, bursting pipes and nonworking elevators, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Code enforcement officials deemed the buildings unsafe and evacuated all residents on Christmas Day 2022. Reporting by The Columbus Dispatch on the earlier tenant settlement put the households displaced that day at 154.
City concerns predated the evacuation. In September 2022, the City of Columbus said in its own release that it had filed contempt motions against Paxe Latitude for violating a May 2022 court order to improve security, address code violations and bring the property into compliance, citing periods without electricity, hot water and elevator service, flooding and accumulating trash.
After the evacuation, Franklin County Environmental Judge Stephanie Mingo levied $4.3 million in fines in February 2023 after holding Paxe Latitude in contempt, according to reporting by The Columbus Dispatch. The owners filed for bankruptcy in New Jersey, which a federal judge dismissed in August 2023, and the city’s Property Action Team pursued the owners in that court, The Dispatch reported.
Former tenants were addressed earlier. In January 2024, a judge signed a $1.5 million settlement for former tenants, funded from insurance proceeds under an agreement involving Klein’s office, the mortgage holder’s lawyers and the Legal Aid Society of Southeast and Central Ohio, according to reporting by The Columbus Dispatch. In 2024, Klein also announced $10,000 checks for each affected household, The Dispatch reported. Thursday’s money instead goes to the city, mostly to seed the relocation fund.
The case also changed city policy. In July 2024, Columbus unveiled its first Relocation Assistance Code, which the city said holds owners responsible for relocation costs after an emergency vacate order: temporary housing for up to three months when a unit can be repaired, or a cash payment tied to fair market rent when it cannot. If an owner refuses, the city can pay and pursue repayment.
The scale of those costs is why the city wants a fund ready. Columbus spent at least $9 million rehousing residents of Colonial Village and Latitude Five25 combined, according to reporting by Matter News — a figure covering both complexes, not Latitude Five25 alone. A pre-funded account, replenished by landlords found responsible, is the city’s attempt to be ready before the next building fails.
The Sawyer Boulevard site is now in a different chapter. The towers sat vacant for years, and Nuveen Real Estate bought them in late 2025 for $7 million, according to reporting by The Columbus Dispatch. Demolition began in May and was expected to wrap up in the fall, The Dispatch reported. The developer plans an eight-building, 380-unit complex for seniors and families on the roughly 7-acre site, with a fitness center, classrooms, computer labs and playgrounds, according to the project description reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: Confirmed, from the statement by Klein’s office reported by The Columbus Dispatch, is that the city will receive more than $1 million in initial funds, most of it will seed the Tenant Relocation Fund, and the city anticipates another payment in 2027. Not detailed in the announcement as reported are the settlement’s exact total, the size or timing of the 2027 payment, or when the fund will first pay out.
What happens next is twofold. Columbus will deposit the money, build the Tenant Relocation Fund around it and wait on the payment it anticipates in 2027, while the 2024 ordinance governs who ultimately pays at the next emergency evacuation. On Sawyer Boulevard, the focus shifts from courtrooms to construction: the planned 380-unit development will decide what replaces one of the most troubled addresses in recent Columbus housing history — and whether a site that displaced 154 households on Christmas Day houses families again.